


A Pair of Dice:Tragan

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [6]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alien Sex, BBC radio, BDSM, Body Horror, Bondage, Character Death, F/M, Pornography, Third Doctor Era, Torture, experienced reality, naglon, snuff film, space travel, the paradise of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 01:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11704305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: What happened after the Third Doctor defeated the sadistic alien Tragan? Did Tragan get his fair trial - or a more subtle justice? Based on the BBC Third Doctor audio adventure 'Paradise of Death'.





	1. Act I: Rock

**Author's Note:**

> Although this is part of the Damnatio Memoriae series, there is no direct tie between the two stories currently posted, and they can be read independent of each other. The characters will be converging later on in the series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although this is part of the 'Damnatio Memoriae' series, it can be read as a stand-alone work.

Tragan was furious.

It showed in the tension of his manacled fists, and the set of his shoulders in the loose prison tunic. The furious hiss of his breath in his nostrils as he stood in the dock was another sign. But most of all, his anger showed in his face.

His face rippled like boiling porridge, bladders pulsing and colouring his face purple, red, almost black. The long hairs on his warty cheeks thrashed like whips. Anyone who knew Naglons would have kept well out of biting range at the sight of his convulsing features.

The judge finally wheezed, "This preliminary review hearing is closed. Guard, please remove the prisoner."

Tragan took one of his rare opportunities to have his say. "Your Honour, I must protest, it has been-"

The guard came up to his elbow and said, "Time to go now."

Tragan ignored him. "- over a year that I have been held in confinement! I have had no legal counsel, no contact with my embassy, I have not even been told when the trial will take place!"

The Judge actually noticed Tragan for a change, but only to say, "Guard, please remove Mr. Tragan."

Tragan fumed as he was led out. He knew, knew absolutely, that someone was arranging for his trial to be postponed. But who? The new Prime Minister? The Parakon Corporation President?

He could still claim one scrap of dignity before returning to his tiny cell. "I need to relieve myself," he announced, coming to a stop in front of the lavatories. As usual, the guard said nothing: he simply followed Tragan inside, escorted him into a booth – and then locked it from the outside. He was trapped, until he knocked and asked to be let out: sometimes the guards would let him work himself into a frenzy, kicking and screaming, before they would let him out.

And Tragan did need to relieve himself, although not of his bodily wastes. Pacing in a tight circle in the booth, he swore to himself, "I swear I'll see you all gutted and dead! I'll torture you to madness! You, Onya, the President, that guard, that girl in the hallway, all of you! See your raw organs in the dirt! Flay your children alive in front of your eyes! I'll rend you apart with my own hands and feed you to guard beasts! You can't do this to me!" His mind seemed to froth higher and higher, piling improbable agonies one upon the other.

With no warning the booth door opened – which it was not supposed to do. Standing there was a man, humanoid, about Tragan's height and wearing an outfit similar to his except for the tunic.

"Tragan. Take off your tunic," ordered the stranger.

"What? Who are you?" snapped Tragan.

The stranger whispered, "Trade you this mask for your tunic," as he reached up to his hairline and peeled off his face.

The stranger's real face was Naglon: mauve and hairy and warty – and somewhat resembling Tragan's own. Enough to fool these fools, he thought, as he stripped off his tunic and exchanged it for the mask.

"Fair trade," he whispered.

The other stepped into the booth, and pulled the door shut; in the lavatory, Tragan was left facing a short figure in a green robe. A woman, who quickly relocked the booth door, touched a finger to her lips in the universal gesture for silence, and took Tragan's arm, urging him towards the full-length mirror at the rear. She touched it, and the mirror became a door, and they went through.

On the other side was a larger, more luxurious stall; the woman pushed back her hood and closed the mirror door.

"Where are we?" whispered Tragan.

"Woman's private booth. I'm Pilot Avva Omet-J, and I'm here to help you escape."

She smiled at him, and the purple strips of wattles down her cheeks flexed with the motion. "You're very asymmetrical, you know."

Tragan's colour pores enlarged and puffed in the equivalent of a blush; he looked considerably more purple for a moment. Some races prized symmetry as a measure of attractiveness; apparently she went the other way. "Nobody's called me that since I was a boy."

"Really? A pity. Well, that Naglon who just took your place had a grudge, or a debt, to someone named Mudspit in your cellblock, and was willing to trade places to get inside. I don't know if he plans to help Mudspit escape or to assassinate him, but he's sure to make a mess that should cover your trail."

"Who are you working for?" asked Tragan.

"My employer is in the way of a – venture capitalist type. Instead of investing in businesses, she invests in people. People who, for example, served as executives in companies like the Parakon Corporation, but had only minimal funds seized when they were arrested. Implying that the funds were – elsewhere. And could be accessed. Are you following me so far?"

"Indeed. You expect me to pay my own ransom, then."

"We prefer to call it a 'liberation fee,' but yes. If you can't pay, you can be let go, owing my employer – a favour. It's a roll of the dice, but you can always go back through the mirror. Maybe in ten years you'll finally find out who your lawyer is-"

"No! I can pay. I can pay - very well. Get me out of here, off this planet, and your employer's investment will be multiplied many times over."

Avva smiled again. "Excellent. Get your mask on and we'll leave." As he smoothed it over his features, feeling it cling as the best masks do, she handed him a pair of gloves to cover his hands, and a cloak. "Now pant."

"Pant?"

"Breathe heavily, like you've been exerting yourself."

He did so, walking arm in arm with Avva as she stepped to the front and handed the attendant a tip. The attendant winked. "When you gotta come, you gotta come, eh?"

"Love knows no limits," Avva replied, caressing Tragan's arm with her fingers. And then they were outside.

* * *

He was out! At least, out from the immediate attention of the guards of Justice House, and if he could just find a door that was not guarded … or if his mysterious rescuer could. They mingled with the various clerks and witnesses, following the motion of the crowd almost at random. "Walk casually, we need to get into the next section before we can leave," she instructed.

He looked at her out of the corner of her eye; except for the wattles she looked like any other standard humanoid, and smelled a bit worse than most of them.

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe I recognise your species?" he asked, pausing and regarding a very bad painting of some great Judge of the past. The arm under his stiffened.

"I'm Sast, we are an artificial species," she said; and then her arm clamped down, else he would have withdrawn his. "Keep still you fool! We need to get through here without being noticed."

Tragan kept still by a distinct effort. Artificial species were – rare, considered rather odd, infamously prone to being wiped out by disease or gene drift, and generally relegated to the lowest levels of society. To find one here actually holding his arm was a shock.

She turned him away from the painting and they started walking again, while she lectured him under her breath. "There's no shame in being born into an artificial species, just because your genes were picked at random over millions of years, and mine were chosen by design over five, doesn't mean that we will not both be around in another million years – or billion, for that matter."

Tragan replied, "Give that speech often?

"Far too often. Look, are you going to fight me every step of the way? Because if so, I can just walk away and leave you here. See if you can make your own way out, maybe you still have Parakon contacts who can help you, maybe you don't."

With a fine show of hauteur, Tragan said, "Since we've come this far, I admit I'm curious to see if you can get me out. Get us both out rather, I doubt your presence is authorised here."

She muttered, "If snootiness was a shovel, you've had dug yourself out by now."

Tragan kept walking, and kept his arm in hers. A bit of role-playing was an acceptable payment for getting out of here. After he was out, he could see if the rest of the payment could not be - escaped as well.

In the next section, which had considerably fewer people, Avva set a faster pace as though making up for lost time. She led Tragan at a trot through a service door, down several dingy passageways and a set of stairs that was out-and-out noisome, and then outside.

The sounds of traffic hit him like a blow, but it was so good to be outside, to feel the fresh air! He lifted his head high, breathing deeply again.

They were at the rear of the building; the traffic noises echoed between it and the high concrete wall that rose up (he tilted his head back) very far up. The Justice House must be built flush against the spaceport; this concrete slab was the base where the massive electronic fields guided ships in for landing.

"Have you done any low gravity climbing?" asked Avva, arranging an X-shaped harness around her body so that she could slip a peculiar flat device against her middle.

"No, well, once in ER –" Tragan flinched as she swept another hood and cloak over his shoulders, and started buckling straps around him as well, "look, what are we doing?"

"We're climbing that wall."

Tragan froze, and then answered, not mildly, "Are you insane! It must be a thousand lengths straight up!"

"No, it's just over six hundred lengths, and there's a definite four degree tilt inwards. Besides, I climbed down it just now; climbing up should be easy for a big strong Naglon like you."

She clipped another flat device to him, and turned it on: it emitted a low surging hiss that reminded him of the ocean for some reason. "This is a gravity plane, it lets the wearer bend and inhibit gravity. When we get up against that wall, the plane will make the vertical feel like down, and also make you weigh a twentieth of your present mass. So you'll feel like you are crawling along a flat floor in low gravity, follow me so far?"

"Who's the manufacturer?"

"No time for details! What you have to remember is, it only works close to a surface – you understand? You have to keep flat and push yourself along with your fingertips; you'll be light so it should be easy so long as you don't go too fast. You must keep your chest as close to the wall as you can, because if you drift away or go to your hands and knees you'll fall."

"What happens if I fall?"

"You die, I come down and collect the gravity plane from your corpse, and then sell you. Perhaps to a tanner. That hide would make a very elegant seat cover."

Tragan winced, and stepped to the wall; when he was almost touching it, he felt the plane react, and he was suddenly face down on a flat surface, feeling like he was floating underwater, weightless. He reached up and placed both hands on the concrete; pressing them flat, he lifted himself off the ground, then back.

"Can you feel it?" said Avva.

"Yes, when I look around-" he stopped, overcome by the feeling that the Justice House was looming not behind, but above him; was about to come smashing down on his head!

A set of sharp knuckles rapped his wrist. "Don't look around, you'll get vertigo! Reach up and go, then. Go slowly, keep your body as flat to the wall as you can."

He looked at the Pilot and noticed that their cloaks were spread out around them, now the same colour as the concrete they clung to, masking them from view.

"Up we go, then. We've got plenty of time to get to the top."

He pushed off with his toes from what had been the ground, and they began to climb. Slowly, the concrete rolled past under his face as he moved upward. It was easy at first, but the strain started to creep up on his chest and shoulders as they climbed higher and higher, hearing the ground traffic noises recede even as the air traffic grew louder. It was a terribly unnatural posture, and the temptation to put his knees on the ‘ground' and crawl faster was hard to resist. He was constantly aware of having to keep the gravity plane the correct distance from the wall. Looking up, he could see the top edge creeping closer – maybe. It was still very far away.

Avva was moving smoothly, her fingertips barely touching the concrete, her toes turned outwards and shoving along as well, but he noticed her wattles turning darker, almost black. With exertion?

He found himself almost reflexively pulling at the wall faster, faster. His fingers weren't getting quite as good a grip now, but he had to get off this wall! He had to escape!

Behind him he heard, "Slow down, Tragan, you're starting to drift. Let me catch up to you."

Tragan kept on pulling grimly, rising himself up off the wall to get the strain off his shoulders, let his chest muscles take over-

"Tragan, stop! Right now! Go flat!"

Tragan tried to stop, and found himself drifting forward; finally succeeding in frightening himself, he put both hands flat and caught himself.

His rescuer continued to lecture him as she caught up. "If you panic up here you'll die! Now calm down! Lie down flat."

He did, closing his eyes, letting his inner ear convince him that he was not clinging multiple stories above the street, held flat to a sheer wall by nothing but a device no larger than his hand. The band of ache seemed to relax as he did.

"This will never work! Anyone can see me!" he snarled.

"These cloaks match the wall pretty closely, and there's no windows on the back of Justice House. Now look, you're letting your feet drift up behind you, away from the wall. The gravity plane's field of effect is like a flat surface all around you, and if your feet drift out of the plane, off of that surface, you'll be dragged into the planet's regular gravity field and off the wall. You will die unless you are slow and careful!"

Tragan complained, "My toes drag on the wall."

"Let them drag, it'll remind you to keep them on the wall."

He twisted around, raising his head, and noticed that Avva's heels did not protrude from the cloak at all; apparently her feet could rotate flat to the wall. "Your feet - hm. My feet can't do that."

Avva twitched her eyebrows at him in some undecipherable gesture, and said only "Blame your Creator. Ready to go?"

"No, but I'll go anyway," he said, and dug in with his fingertips, and up they both went.

He had his second wind, and waited until it had almost run out before asking, "How far?"

His escort replied, "We're almost there, right, here's the rim markers. OK, this is where most people die."

Tragan jumped – and found himself floating a bit above the wall; he had to scrabble with his fingers to regain purchase. "What?"

"Let me rephrase that; this is where most people who are going to make a lethal mistake make it."

"That's better. What mistake?"

Avva clung to the wall with two feet and one hand, and gestured with her free arm as she talked. "The top of the spaceport field is shaped like a cup, and we're on the edge of the rim on the outside. But if we went straight up and over the edge, headfirst-"

Tragan interrupted. "Our heads would extend out of the gravity plane field, and we'd fall."

She smiled. "Quick study. So, what we need to do is, go over with your body parallel to the rim. Get an arm and a leg over, hold on, get your torso over, and then once the gravity plane is established on the other side, we can go down the inside."

Tragan nodded and said, "I understand."

She manoeuvred on the wall, tugging at his elbow to turn him, until they were both facing each other, parallel to the rim (and the street below, which Tragan resolutely did not look at). "OK now, turn to face me, start moving up sideways – moving up – I've got the rim, do you?"

"Yes." His right arm and leg had it, as did her left arm and leg.

"Over and-" but her words were cut short by a blast of wind that ruffled her cloak and pushed her back; it was the ruffling that warned Tragan. He shouted "Watch it!" and had just enough time to grab her wrist on the far side of the wall and shove it downwards, following it with his body, until they were both clinging to the wall, safely on the inside of the spaceport, arms all muddled together but gravity planes safely pressed to the wall, like two disorderly lizards.

Avva extracted her head from under his neck, rubbed her nose on her shoulder – it looked abraded – and said only, "Thank you very much. That crosswind wasn't blowing on the way down."

Tragan wasn't interested in her nose. "And now where?"

"That large red ship over there."

Tragan eyed it: a large cargo ship, probably multi-system hauling, and minimal crew. Plenty of places for two stowaways to hide. "Where do we go in?"

"We don't, we're riding up on the outside."

Tragan felt the hairs on his cheeks begin to creep under the mask, and the faint feeling he'd ignored before, that he might have fallen into the hands of a madwoman, rose stronger in him. "What do you mean, the outside?"

"See that yellow blister pod on the hull, that looks like a spare engine?"

He did, and it looked very small and flimsy compared to the massive bulk of the red ship. "You surely aren't suggesting that we are smuggling ourselves off this planet inside a spaceship engine!"

She told him in a cheery tone, "That's not a spare engine, that's my ship, the Righteous Flea. It's fastened to the hull, and we're just going to hitch a ride off planet and into hyper."

Tragan looked at her, and blinked. With a calm he did not feel, he asked, "Is it still too late to go back to the Justice House?"

"Not at all. Just give me back the gravity plane and then step over the edge, you'll be right there in a minute."

Tragan's hypothetical answer – probably obscene – was cut off by the blast of air from an unmanned cargo carrier that drove along the rim, centimetres from their bodies by the wall, and then turned and dove under one of the waiting spaceships.

Since he couldn't get back into his cell, he decided to try logic. "Look, before that ship goes into hyper, they're going to scan the weight ratio. The mass of two stowaways and a ship – wait –"

This time Avva smiled; her teeth were white and rather crooked on one side. "So, is that a machine on your chest for distorting gravity, or are you just happy to see me?"

Tragan touched the fingers of one hand to the hissing box on his chest, supporting himself unthinkingly on the other elbow and hand. "The gravity plane effect … it works to fool a mass sensor as well?"

"Yes. We're going to float up unnoticed with that ship, and then once it's in hyper and the sensors are locked down, the Flea detaches and we go on our way. Nobody combing the spaceship records will see any strange ships taking off, or any overweight ones either."

Tragan's mind quickly picked at the plan, looking for weak spots. "Won't anyone on that red ship notice that they're missing a spare engine?"

"Because they've never had a spare engine, I doubt that they'll miss it. The internal sensors don't show that it's there, the camera that would scan that part of the hull happened to have a little accident, and nobody walks around outside on the landing field because," and the thunder of another passing vehicle made her pause, "of the large automated cargo movers that keep zipping past our noses. Like that one. But the movers won't notice anything that's low enough to the ground. So, we are going to glide low over to the red ship. Go to the nearest ground level stabiliser, straight in to the hull, up the hull to the yellow blister pod, and in the green door. Got it?

Tragan felt like he'd been hit over the head with a large soft club, but still managed to get out, "May I ask what would we have done if we had gotten up here and the ship had already gone?" Saving face.

The Pilot raised her scuffed nose a fraction in the air and declared, "That ship is awaiting a specific delivery, which is being held up until I signal."

He looked at the distance between them and the base of the red ship. It looked distressingly far, and those cargo carriers were moving very fast – "How fast can we go using these gravity planes?"

"Fast enough to knock your brains out against the wall on the far side, if you're not careful. But we can hopefully do it in one swoop. Here, brace your feet against the wall, reach forward as far as you can…get ready, you're going to push off, stay flat, now!"

And they flew! They soared, chests skimming the pavement, fingertips shoving them along. And this time when Tragan went a little too fast, got a little too high, the gravity pushed him down and back to where the gravity plane could work again. It was wonderful! He imagined hunting using this device, actually being on the level of the prey…

A cargo mover came towards them and they both jinked to the left with their fingers, but Avva was going faster and her jink carried her into the path of another cargo carrier. There was a thud and a fluttering of cloth.

Tragan kept going, and found himself at the ground stabiliser of the red ship. He looked around, trying to see grey cloth fluttering against the pavement.

He whispered to himself, "Damn! Where is she. Did it?"

And again, "Where is she?"

He looked up at the yellow pod so far overhead – a ship he had no idea of how to fly, or even how to enter. "Now what?"

The answer was cloth flapping in his ear and an arm around his shoulders; Avva was close to him, too close, and he flinched.

Breezily she said, "Sorry, got dragged, had to come around the long way. Now up, and fast!"

And up they went.

* * *

The gravity plane didn't seem to work as well on a spaceship hull, the hum of it wavered, but it let them loft up to the ‘spare engine' and its green door that Avva opened and then closed behind them.

Inside it was pitch black; Tragan stood, and found himself being dragged forward. Avva's voice came out of the dark. "Now we wait. Come here." He felt her fingers brushing over his chest, and deliberately backed up a pace, hearing the crunch of carpet pile under his shoes.

He hissed, "What? What are you doing? Can't we have some light?"

"No, we're in passive mode, they might detect it. I'm setting your gravity plane to maximum null, try not to move around too fast or you'll go flying."

Her fingers found his chest again and moved on the gravity plane. When she took him by the shoulders and laid him down on his back, he found himself drifting, with only the shaggy carpet under his wrists and heels to give him any direction.

His fingers touched the hissing mystery on its harness. He hated not knowing how to handle things around him. "How do I adjust-"

Again the woman interrupted him. "You don't. If you turned the controls the wrong way, the plane would squash you flat. It's at its optimal setting now. So we just wait."

Tragan drummed his heels on the floor. "But we could be here for hours in the dark, waiting for the ship to lift!"

Her voice was ironic out of the dark. "Or you could be spending hours in your cell in Justice House. Not as dark, but probably just as boring."

Tragan tried to relax; it was easy actually, just the brush of the back of his hands could keep him floating. He decided it was time to orient himself a little bit better.

"What is the name of your employer, this ‘she' you mentioned?"

Avva's voice had a lilt in it. "That would be telling. Let's say that I am an employee of the O Corporation."

"Never heard of it."

"Good."

Cheeky girl. Tragan decided to try another path of questioning.

"Do you know why my trial was eternally being postponed?"

"I don't know exactly, but I can guess. The new Prime Minister, Katyan Glessey-"

Tragan spat, and felt his own breath loft himself downward. "That miserable spy!"

"Spy?"

Tragan continued, his voice full of loathing, "Yes, she used to be the President's caretaker Onya, working her way into his confidences, before she turned around and stabbed us all in the back! Stabbed me in the back!"

Ignoring his heat, Avva went on. "Anyway, she and the President have been digging up lots of dirt that the Parakon Corporation did, spreading it out in the bright light of media attention, and then recycling it for fertiliser – so to speak. My guess is, you were being held in reserve; if something came up that was too hot to show the media, they would announce the trial of the sinister Vice Chairman Tragan. And if you were never needed …"

Her voice trailed off, and he prompted, "Well?"

"They would have just locked you away, perpetually about to be charged and put on trial, but never quite all the way through the legal process. Until you died of old age."

Tragan blinked in the dark. "I'm not that old, you know. I could live another hundred Parakon years easily."

Avva was suddenly closer; he could feel her breath blowing past his face as she spoke. "And you could live it all in a cage. Be grateful to my employer, Tragan. Be generous when she asks you how much you think your freedom is worth."

A rumbling of engines interrupted their dialogue; it was eerie to hear it and not feel any reaction of movement, of pressure or added weight, in your own body.

Rather redundantly, he asked, "Are we off?"

"Yes, lifting off now! Work your fingers well into the carpet and hold on; otherwise you'll start sliding around."

Tragan sniffed and declared, "Some people have proper chairs for sitting in."

"Some people don't have a steady stream of passengers with varying anatomies. How would I carry chairs for all of them? The carpet's clean, anything that can grip can grip it, and wet passengers stick to it."

Tragan's fingers tried to flinch from the carpet imagining what wet horrors might have oozed into it; he kept his hands flat. The engine noise peaked, then slowly thundered away into silence as they left atmosphere and entered the soundless vacuum.

Tragan sighed to himself. "And now the wait for hyper. More tedium."

"A ship this size will go straight out, and fast. It won't be long. Sorry we can't play any music, but I could hum if you like. Or do you know any games?

Tragan's ears perked up – literally, not that anyone could tell in the dark of course. "Like, say, Pinch the Pilot?" Reaching for the sound of rustling cloth beside him, he suited action to words, and got a painful blow to the shoulder in return.

"Ouch!"

Avva snapped, "How about Pummel the Passenger for a game? No, I meant like Threm chess, or Kra canodlwo, or-"

"I don't know any of those games."

She sighed, and there was the rustle of a sleeve in the dark. "Too bad. But we must wait until this ship jumps into hyper, before we power up. Too late to leave now, Tragan."

"Very well," he replied. And inside his heart, he added another black mark against her name for that ‘too bad'. Tragan's heart had a lot of room for black marks.

Tragan grumped some more, but Avva was impossible to budge, and kept them both floating in the dark until the indescribable riffling of the hyper jump rippled through them.

When the light finally came on, Tragan looked at the carpet and winced. He shoved himself up as though scalded, and looked down at the most revolting woven stew of contrasting blues, browns and oranges he had ever seen.

"What a hideous carpet!"

"Invigoratingly ghastly, I prefer to call it. But it hides stains very well," said Avva, stripping off her cloak and taking his as well, and turning off and unbuckling the gravity plane while she was at it. She took him by the arm again and led him to one of the doors that led off of the large square room whose only feature was that – carpet thing. She opened it and gestured him inside. "Your quarters for the trip."

Inside, she pointed out the features quickly. "No live news feed until we've detached, but the cache should be fresh. New clothes, pressure bath."

"A Naglon bath!" Tragan exclaimed. The irregularities of his skin required special cleaning that he had been unable to coax from the feeble prison showers.

"We aim to please. I need to go decouple the Flea, stow away these gravity planes for charging, and check the planetary news myself. Feel free to wash up and such, dinner's served as soon as I'm hungry."

He completely ignored her exit, stripping off his clothes, mask and gloves and piling them on the floor. "A decent pressure bath, oh it's been months."

He turned on the computer terminal, set the microphone for high and settled into the bath; turning the control for maximum steam, he let it wash over him. He breathed it in, savouring the weight and heat in his lungs, and then shouted, "Computer! Search for articles, keyword Parakon Corporation, period last standard year begin!"

The steam started to work its way around every bump and bubble of his hide, hanging in a fine stream of droplets on each hair; he sighed in pleasure, considering this part of his ‘liberation fee' to be well earned.

The computer started to reply, but he could barely hear it. "Four hundred twenty nine-"

"Computer, double volume and repeat!"

Now he could hear it. "Four hundred twenty nine articles found. Read articles?"

Tragan quickly answered, "Cancel. Top eight most frequently indexed keywords in those articles, read aloud!"

The machine's monotone answer was, "Scandal, failure, leadership, transition, rapine plant life, war, Freeth, Katyan Glessey."

Tragan slitted his eyes in thought. Transition, scandal, and Katyan Glessey. Not promising. Not at all. He squeezed the muscles of his back, feeling them relax from the strain of climbing the wall, feeling the filth and ooze of his prison life drip out of his pores. He had another question for the computer.

"Computer, scan for articles, keyword Parakon Corporation, secondary keyword Tragan, period last standard year begin!"

"Five articles found."

He shook his head, as though not hearing correctly. Turning off the steam and taking a towel, a wonderful thick rubbery Naglon towel, not one of those horrid cloth things that got all tangled on him, he came out of the bath and stood in front of the computer, drying himself off and wincing at the stains his skin left on the towel. God, he was filthy! It would take multiple baths to get him clean.

He asked the computer, rhetorically, "Five? Only five?" But the computer did not answer, of course.

He slipped into the clean clothes that were laid out for him on the bed, and sadly fingered the loose fit of the shoulders. He'd lost muscle mass in his cell, with no room for a proper workout program; have to get back in shape. Whip himself back into shape. Set a plan, set a goal.

He addressed the computer carefully, pronouncing the alien names slowly so that it would make no mistakes. "Computer, scan for news, period last standard year, names Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, The Doctor, begin."

The computer answered at the top of its metal lungs, "No matching-"

He'd forgotten to turn it down. "Stop! Halve volume and repeat!"

The computer repeated at a more normal volume, "No matching articles found. Partial matches found for The Doctor, read articles?"

He said to the computer, "Cancel." And then to himself, sitting down on the bed, "But they are out there, and I will find them. I remember what they did. To me! I do believe I would be able to snatch them all in one swoop. And then, the games could begin. Special games. Games for two, for three, for four even. And very special games, just for you and me – Sarah Jane."

He smiled, although to a Naglon, a smile was just what you did to bare your teeth for the strike. "And in the games I play, I always win."

After that pleasant thought, he had the computer assemble a quick news summary of the past year and read it to him while he stretched and twisted, tested his strength and his reflexes, trying to see what he had lost.

The computer was saying, "stocks rose overall in the agricultural sector, while the discovery of large quantities of erom ore in the Tepp sector caused a surge in" when the voice of the Pilot – he'd almost forgotten she was here – sounded through the door.

"Food! Shake a frongle and come get it!" she shouted.

Tragan gasped, and opened the door to sharply address her, "Pilot Avva, let me make something clear to you. I was a very powerful person before, and I intend to be again. We may have been thrust together by necessity, certainly we would never have met under normal circumstances, but I demand to be treated with respect. You will not use that gutter language in my presence!"

Avva raised her brows, and answered only, "As you wish, Mr. Tragan," gesturing with open palms to the table that had risen out of the floor in the centre room.

"Better," he opined.

She held his seat out for him, and said, "Your seat, sir." He took it, and she walked around the table and took hers.

The stew was hot and there was plenty of it. Across from him, Avva smiled to watch him devour his meal, and ate from her own dish of pale grains. She said, "You seem to have worked up a healthy appetite."

He looked at her, spoon hovering over his bowl, and asked, "Do you know what would be served in the Justice House cellblock today?"

"No, sir."

"Green mush. Tomorrow would be blue pulp. The day after that, green mush. And the day after that, blue pulp. And the day after that…"

She rolled her hand in the air. "Green mush?"

"Yellow goop."

She nodded her head, as though to agree he was well out of prison, and addressed her own meal. After a bit, he looked up and decided to try and figure out where she had learned her surprisingly vulgar vocabulary.

"That – word you used – was in, well, a very low Naglon dialect. I can't imagine where you heard it."

"I used to work in Naglon space, I must have picked up some bad language there."

"You did?" Tragan blinked. "Most races tend to steer clear of our worlds."

Avva snorted. "The way most races steer clear of artificials? I don't subscribe to the popular opinion that all Naglons are inherently vicious; it's nothing but racism of the worst sort. All members of a race are different."

"What about the clone races? Sontarans?" Tragan was enjoying this.

She paused, considered. "Well, they're a special case. But in general you can't assume that just because so-and-so is of a specific race that he, she or it has to be like the other members of that race. Look at yourself."

Swallowing, Tragan could only answer, "Um?"

"You wouldn't have been Vice Chairman of the Parakon Corporation if you were dropping your work every five minutes to flog the secretaries, now would you?"

"That's very perceptive of you."

She went on. "If you look at the news articles, certainly your name is coupled with some rather extreme actions of the Corporation, but wasn't it that such actions were assigned to you just because you were a Naglon? Because it was assumed you would happily leap in and start hacking and slashing?"

"I never thought of it that way," said Tragan. Actually he had been more than happy to hack and slash, but let the girl delude herself.

"Here," Avva said, extending a folder of printed records to him. "I forgot to compile this and put it in your cabin. Your confiscated assets – better to know in advance what they did clean out," she said, and stared into her bowl, stirring it with her utensil.

Tragan opened the folder with one hand and started to read. His spoon reached for his bowl – and then dropped, clattering on the table. He breathed in sharply, and then again.

Avva kept looking down, and when she finally rolled up her eyes to regard Tragan, she saw him frozen, staring with stricken eyes at the folder's contents.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

"I can't finish that." Tragan pushed his bowl away from him.

"Do you want-" but Avva was cut off.

"No, I don't want it, I just want to be alone. Leave me alone!" he snapped, and went back into his quarters with the folder.

Avva finished her own meal, then parsimoniously poured Tragan's uneaten stew back into the pan and dropped it into a stasis drawer, which powered on with a ‘bloop' noise at her command. At another command, the table folded itself away and slid down into the floor, and the carpet resealed itself.

Inside his room, Tragan read the contents of the folder again and again, and then lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling with dry eyes.

* * *

He finally emerged hours later, to find no sign of the Pilot. The table was back under the floor apparently. Not wanting to go hunting and pecking among the unmarked doors, he said, "Pilot?" and a door slid open. Avva's voice said, "I'm in my quarters, sir. Straight across."

He entered, and stood in the centre of what must be her private quarters. It was smaller than his, with just a bed and a worktable, the washing facility little more than a niche; at the table, Avva was doing something complicated involving a sheet of paper and several brushes. She looked at him, and said nothing.

He looked around deliberately, and said, "Your room is even smaller than mine."

She said, her voice tinged with sarcasm, "I only use it when I have passengers. Sir."

"I've owned houses with closets that were larger than this - Flea."

She tilted her head, and only replied, "How nice for you."

He strolled about the two paces he could, examining the hodgepodge of décor on the walls. "Hmm, I suppose you've never had a proper decorator in here either."

"Which explains my carpet, of course."

But he was stopped, stopped dead in fact, by one item encased in a heavy steel and glassteel case. "This scroll, it's signed Gallmian."

Avva said agreeably, "So it is."

Tragan looked at her just a little bit too wide-eyed, then back at the scroll. "But it's a reproduction of course."

She casually said, "It is an original Gallmian, actually. I've collected Gallmian calligraphy for the last decade or so."

Tragan's cheek hair crept again. "It must be worth …you could sell it for an estate on Moro III!"

She shrugged. "But where would I put an estate like that in the Righteous Flea?"

Tragan put his hands behind his back, and paused to collect himself. He'd felt himself sliding from the upper ground in front of this girl, and he wanted that high ground back! But – appearance was everything. "I wanted to apologise for my – deserting the table like that. It was very poor manners."

"You had bad news to consider. Losing a pet is always painful." Avva blinked, and started to wipe her brushes and put them away, her hands moving over them while she still looked at Tragan.

Tragan slumped. "I always hoped that somebody would purchase them, someone who would appreciate them. But instead they just, just terminated the lot of them. My beasts, my beautiful savages, locked into cages and gassed! I chose them from so many planets, raised them from the egg some of them. Trained them, worked them, cared for them when they were sick – and they got thrown away like so much trash! No, thrown away with the trash!

"Well, except for those two guard animals who got loose and ate-"

"I don't care who they ate, at least they died fighting! And when I find the butchers who took them down!" Tragan glared at her.

"They were your responsibility, and you could not follow through for them." Avva touched her hands together, fingertip to fingertip, in a curiously ritual way. "I understand."

"You couldn't possibly," retorted Tragan. How could she understand the thrill of working with a beast, stalking and hunting with it as a part of you, an extension of your will?

"No? Well sir, for your own safety and comfort, I'd like to give you a tour of the Flea, show you what is where. Then we can agree to disagree and stay out of each other's pelt until we rendezvous with my employer."

"And when will that be?"

"We drop out of hyper within the next four hours, then I'm going to muddy the trail a bit in normal space, mingle on some of the more heavily travelled space lanes. Then back into hyper and – say, ten days in all, subjective."

Tragan calculated distances in his head. "Hm. Your employer is closer to Parakon space than I thought. I expect you are required to keep a polite distance."

Avva's mouth pursed. "The Sast are a race designed for space, sir, and the O Corporation is also space based. A corporation that is remarkably free of those little prejudices that sometimes blind other races."

They stared at each other, each with the expression of someone who has bitten something very, very sour.

Tragan said, "I think we'd better have that tour now."

Avva agreed. "Before we strangle each other."

First she led him to – no surprise – the control room. "Navigation and main control. Standard space distress beacon is here."

Tragan retorted, "I would hardly want to alert the authorities to my whereabouts, even in an emergency."

She replied, "Ah well, in that case you would hold down this button first, then press that control twice. That will engage the autopilot that will take the ship to its home base. And not set off the standard space distress beacon."

"I thought an emergency autopilot that didn't engage the distress signal was illegal."

"Oh, it is. Going to report me?"

"Hardly."

In a by-the-way tone, she added, "And if you do have to use this, I'd recommend getting into a spacesuit during the trip. The Flea doesn't land very well under autopilot, and it might spring a leak."

Tragan pictured the tiny Flea happily hurtling itself into the ground with him inside, and shivered inside. "I'll keep that in mind."

The next room was "Storage and supplies – in my case, mostly media storage. Movies, news, plays, opera, sensuals, sports, vinnio, the lot. And a vidscreen."

He eyed the vidscreen with disapproval. "That could be considerably larger."

Aha, a point scored: the girl sounded defensive as she replied, "It's optimal for the space and weight limitations of the Flea, thank you. Someday they'll come up with a truly universal method of data storage, but until then, well, I have to put up with all this extra wasted mass just to store all the different mediums for translation."

"Couldn't you just put the data into computer file format?"

She stared at him. "And give up the original cover art? That panel beside the screen is L'Index, tell it what you're looking for and it will find it. Then just drop whatever box lights up into this bin, the translation system will do the rest."

Tragan rubbed his fingers together absent-mindedly. "Really? I'm rather out of touch with the current entertainment, perhaps I could get caught back up – with your permission."

She gave a tiny bow of her head, and said, "Be my guest. Because you are, after all, my guest."

Avva stepped to the door as Tragan seated himself, but he called and she stopped.

"Oh Pilot, before you go. I was looking in the news archives and couldn't find any mention of when the gravity plane was released on the market. Is it new? Or marketed under a different name perhaps?"

She smiled and said, "No, it's a device created by the O Corporation. It's not on the open market."

The door closed and Tragan sat frozen. He whispered to himself, "Not on the open market, and invented by some underground organisation that nobody's ever heard of. What would it be worth, I wonder? A gravity controller that can fit in one hand. A mass sensor distorter as well. Get it reverse-engineered, sell it to the highest bidder, and I could have all the power that money can buy!"

He lost himself in that dream for a moment, and then returned. Right here and now, it really had been a very long time since he had felt any sort of pleasure except for his own bitter fantasies, and so …

He touched L'Index, and the screen glowed blue and spoke. "Keywords?"

"Pain."

The computer replied, trying to narrow down his choices. "Pain - emotional, pain - mental, pai-"

"Pain - physical."

"Subcategories: sports, current events, historical -"

"Subcategory - erotica," said Tragan, letting the word drip from his lips.

"Multiple titles found. Read titles?"

"Yes!" said Tragan, starting to tremble a bit in his seat.

"A Moment's Longing: Memories of -"

"No. Next title."

"B's Bug Porn Number 2 through 49, inclusive."

"Hmm, no. Next title."

"Bezze and the Master: The Flensing."

"Stop! Indicate title location."

Tragan turned and looked at the wall of boxes; one of them was flashing a red light. He pulled it from the shelf and placed it in the translation bin, then settled himself in front of the screen on the couch.

L'Index spoke again. "Program loading. Loading complete. This program is available with the following enhancements: Translation into Naglon?"

"Unnecessary," breathed Tragan.

"Experienced Reality?"

"What?" Tragan sat bolt upright. "You have … the headset, where is the headset?"

"Is it on top of the couch?" L'Index apparently did not have a camera, but surely something as important as the headset it should track!

"No. Where is it?!"

"Is it behind the couch?"

There it was! Oh, delicious. Tragan put on the headset and settled in front of the screen, and said, "Commence program."

That dratted L'Index again offered its advice. "This program has two ER tracks. Would you prefer to Experience Bezze or the Master?"

"This time … I believe I will be the Master."

The headset crackled, and Tragan felt himself melting, becoming another person, a man with a whip in his hand and a bare expanse of flesh in front of him, smooth and unmarked, begging to be defiled. The program began with lashings and screams that were met with a deep satisfied sigh of relief from Tragan's lips.

"Ahhhhhhh."


	2. Act II: Scissors

Tragan went into the control room for the fifth time; he knew he was acting like an impatient child, but he couldn't help it. Stuck in the blank void of hyper, you didn't feel like you were out in space: you felt like you were hanging in a room and the walls were closing in.

"Are we there yet?" he asked. Again.

Avva's voice was light and sweet – by severe if invisible effort. "Breakout within one hundred seconds, sir."

Again Tragan looked around the tiny control room. "You might have a place for a passenger to sit."

"Sorry, no extra room to waste. I could send the video in to the vidscreen."

He leaned over her, ignoring the waxy smell, and said, "Thank you, I prefer to watch from here."

The ship was filled with that phantom riffling noise, as though a thousand feathers had brushed your ears and gone. The viewscreen lit up.

"Ah, there we are," said Avva proudly.

Tragan looked out, filling his eyes with the sight: the thousand thousand stars, each a flaming beacon, each seeming to say freedom, freedom, you are free!

"Stars … it's been a long time since I saw them. Where are we?"

She looked down at the instruments. "We're on the major ship route between Parakon and Toovoo, that goes on to Arx. Good, data flow is starting, we can get caught up on the news. I want to proceed along here until the Flea is registered by some of the detection buoys, then back into hyper."

Tragan scowled and asked, "Why would you want your ship to be recognised?"

"Correction, sir: I want the transponder signal that we are sending out to be recognised."

Impressed, Tragan replied, "Ah, very clever. Tell me, how did you get your ship attached to that large red one on Parakon? During repair work, or-"

Avva said, "In free flight, sir."

Tragan said, very slowly and deliberately, "Now we both know that's impossible."

She looked up at him from her seat with another bright smile. "Do we? Well, the Flea doesn't. She can jump and skip and hop onto a starship and off and never raise an electronic shiver. We decoupled while you were in the bath, did you notice?"

He hadn't actually. "No, but-"

She interrupted, "Do you want me to prove it? We're moving in parallel to several large heavy lifters, I could skip over and-"

Tragan forcefully said, "That won't be necessary. I believe you."

Avva murmured, "Now we both know that's impossible."

"What?" Had he heard her correctly?

Without looking, her fingers started to dance over the controls in front of her. "You couldn't possibly believe me without a demonstration. Watch this."

The viewscreen seemed to dip downwards as the ship rotated, and Tragan was suddenly confronted by an endless wall of metal pods and girders skimming by, another starship under them, and close – too close!

He half-shouted, "Move, move woman! That ship is right under us!"

Her voice sounded smug and relaxed. "I know."

Tragan felt heat running through his bones, fear cramping his muscles and his belly. He stammered, watching the wall of metal come closer and closer, "It's - oh no. Stop. Don't!"

The damned Pilot sounded like she was pulling out a splinter as she cooed, "This won't hurt a bit, just"

The entire ship bonged softly, the unmistakable sound of metal brushing metal.

She crowed, "Touch, you're it!" Her fingers flew over the controls again; with great relief Tragan watched the other ship roll out of view as the Flea skipped away. She continued, "And away we go. That's an unmanned freighter, they probably will think we were a meteor."

Tragan paused a moment to collect himself, and another to keep from wringing his Pilot's neck on the spot. With all the control he could muster, he said, "You...you should not play with your life like that. You should not play with MY life like that."

Her head cocked. "Didn't you find it a thrill? No? Half a thrill?"

His lips felt stiff and numb as he said, "I prefer thrills that don't involve annihilation in a cloud of hot plasma."

* * *

Over his next meal, Tragan started putting parts of his plan together. Pilot Avva was to be an integral part of the plan, for a certain amount of time, but persuasion was going to be the tool he used to get her to do what he wanted, rather than fear. For starters.

He said, "I am quite certain my accounts on Arx were untouched. It would only be a minor change in course."

Avva disagreed, "I would prefer to go straight to my employer, sir."

Tragan looked at her with a careful mix of disbelief and pity in the colours of his expression. "Do you have to go there first? Is it imprinted into you, I wonder?"

She straightened in her seat. "No, of course not."

Tragan spoke persuasively. "If I could access my accounts now, I would be in a position to reward you at once for my timely rescue. An advance payment for your own personal services might be in order as well."

Avva only stirred her dish, and said, "Hm."

Tragan pressed on. "And I would also be in a position to start planning my future investments. I am most impressed by the gravity plane, thank you for letting me examine one, and if I knew your company was bringing it onto the market in the near future, I would certainly want to invest in the O Corporation."

"That verges on insider trading, sir."

In an almost-coy tone, he asked, "Going to report me?"

Avva frowned. "No, but I don't know when the gravity plane is going to be marketed, if ever. It makes a most interesting tool for sneaking people out of tight places. Thanks to its use, you are dead-"

Tragan had been taking a sip of water, and he coughed.

Avva waved a hand in apology and explained, "I mean, the Naglon who took your place apparently did have a grudge against Mudspit, and blew him up with a bomb secreted in his rear aural cavity."

Tragan cleared his throat and asked, "How did he extract it before detonating it?"

"He didn't," she said. "That's why I said, you are believed to be dead."

* * *

The next time mealtime arrived. Tragan didn't.

Avva waited at the table for a decent amount of time, then peeked in his room. Door unlocked, room empty. He must be in the storage/media room.

She debated bringing in the food on a tray, but decided she should check his state of mind. Like as not, he'd send her out wearing the bowl if he was grumpy enough. So she knocked at the door and asked, "Mr. Tragan? Food's ready."

No reply.

"Computer, is this door locked?"

The computer speaker in the main cabin droned, "Door is unlocked." She touched the control and it opened, and she went in.

Inside, the screen was lit, showing a slightly blurry frozen picture of a ripe-looking man, apparently talking to reporters. The Corporation logo in the corner of the screen was prominent. On the couch, her passenger sat and stared at the man with an expression of – loss? Regret?

She said, quietly, "That's an old Parakon Corporation news release. And that's Chairman Freeth, isn't it?"

Tragan nodded; apparently he had heard her come in, he just hadn't said anything. "Yes. Sorry, but I really don't feel like eating, can't you just put it in stasis?"

She could of course, but she didn't want him sulking in here until he got sick. Better judge his mood.

She asked, "Was he a friend?"

Tragan rubbed his fingers together again. "He taught me a lot, we shared many of the same tastes. We worked together for years. No, he wasn't a friend. But he deserved better than to be eaten by a Giant Butcher Toad! And to think I used to like those Toads. I'll never be able to look one in the eye again."

Avva looked upward and then down, and said "Neither of us could look one in the eye without a small ladder, I think. I might have – L'Index, keyword search, Giant Butcher Toad, indicate title location."

She turned and removed the flashing box from its shelf; Tragan didn't turn to look. She held the box out where he could see it, and he looked, but did not take.

Avva said, "Here it is: Care and Feeding of your Hoopa Moss Spider. I remember that the Great Butcher Toad happens to eat these as a staple of its diet in the wild."

Tragan still didn't move to take the box. "So?"

"So, there's a scene in here where a Toad falls into a whole nest of Moss Spiders, and they turn the tables on it, so to speak. Cocoon it, drain its blood, and kill it. Very, very, very slowly. Maybe you could watch it, might cheer you up."

Tragan paused, then reached out and took the box from her hand. "It might."

She decided that counted as dismissal, and went to the door. As she opened it Tragan said, "Pilot?"

"Sir?"

"Thank you," he said.

She smiled, though he could not see it, and answered, "My pleasure, sir."

She hoped that would be enough to jolt him out of his funk, but as it was, he ate the next two meals in his room. She was just doing some calculations on an alternate approach to Arx – not that she was necessarily going to go there, just for practice – when Tragan stuck his head in the control room.

"Pilot? I just realised the interplanetary Jut Ball Championships happened while I was in confinement, and I never heard who made the finals."

Avva started to suppress a smile, although he couldn't see her face. "The Chambs and the Trens, sir."

"The Chambs and the Trens – that's ridiculous!" he said, coming up behind her. "How could they even play on the same field? And who won?"

She turned and let him see her smile. "I believe that I won't tell you."

Tragan frowned, puzzled. "What? Why not?"

Her voice was smiling too when she said, "I'm not going to tell you, because I have a recording of the last game here, and I think you should watch it with an open mind."

Tragan stared at her hard, then seemed to dismiss her. "Nonsense. Computer-"

Fast she said, "Computer, ignore passenger Tragan!"

Tragan looked up at the little receiver over their heads. "Computer?" There was no response.

Avva said, "A little safety feature. Computer, L'Index, indicate Jut Ball Championships, this year, after loading play, no titling."

She took Tragan by the elbow and steered him back to the storage room.

"Now just go sit, watch the game, and tell me when you're done your opinion of it. I'll leave the doors open so I can hear."

"I can't believe you won't just tell me!" Tragan complained as he took his seat and dropped the flashing box into the bin.

Avva was actually smirking when she said, "Because you'll hate me forever if I told you. Sit. Watch."

She went back to the control room. And waited. She worked on the course, and listened. The second fifth plays got the appropriate whoops. The third and fourth were dead silent. She concentrated a little too hard on her math, and lost track of the game, but was brought back by the muted sound of her passenger's shouts of dismay.

"No, you fools! No!"

"Sounds like it's wrapping up," she murmured to herself. Then the final yelp confirmed it.

"Augghh!"

Tragan's footsteps were a thunder that ended behind her.

"I can't believe it!" he panted, distraught.

"Told you so," she said, and tried not to gloat. And failed.

Tragan spluttered, "But that referee, it was clearly illegal, and then … but …and the bird! And. And!"

Avva looked at him and rolled her eyes. "Would you have believed me if I told you?"

Tragan almost shouted, "Never!"

"Are you glad that I didn't tell you?" she asked, reasonably enough.

Tragan slumped. "Well yes all right, I am glad. But, that was painful to watch!"

Avva nodded in agreement. "That it was. Oh, Computer, stop ignoring passenger Tragan. It was a great game until that last fifth. The ball handling in the second was particularly deft. Pann really has her passing routines down pat."

Tragan cocked an ear in curiosity. "Most Jut Ball fans think she's a hack who was brought in just because of her hand size."

Avva waved her own hands dismissingly. "No, no really, she's made some very interesting changes to the game. I'm sure you can appreciate …"

And after that, the conversation faded into radial comparisons, and whether salt or fresh water made that much of a difference.

* * *

Tragan was immersed in a particularly lurid ER scenario – who knew you could do that with a vegetable strainer and frozen carbon dioxide? – when the sensory stream faded. The crackling noise of withdrawing from the program rang in his head.

"What-?" he said, and suddenly heard the real world, the ship, where the engines were screaming the way they never should in space.

Over the intercom, Avva's voice shouted, "Tra – VALFUYOSNITZ!"

Tragan's mouth hung open. THAT word was so obscene that he'd never heard it spoken, and only seen it written in the lowest of places. He leaped to his feet and headed for the control room, wondering what stupid stunt she was trying and failing at.

He opened the door and said forcefully, "What did I say about your gutter-"

But he stopped; Avva was ignoring him, tense over the controls, and the stars were wheeling in the main screen. Clearly the Flea was doing some fast manoeuvre, and probably not just for fun. Suddenly the whole ship shook, and there was the sound of the ship itself groaning, metal on metal.

Without looking at him, she ordered, "Be quiet, we've got trouble and you can't help."

"What trouble?"

The ship engines wailed again, and the stars jumped; he caught a flickering view of a massive ship with an open space bay pointing towards them, like a cold mouth, and then it rolled out of view.

"An automated lane clearer," said Avva. "It's decided that the Flea is a piece of debris and is trying to pick it up."

Tragan was confused. "So? Broadcast that you aren't."

"I did," she said grimly, "and it's ignoring me. I don't think it's a lane clearer, I think it's an unmanned abduction machine. Goes around sweeping up whatever it can catch, then goes into hyper and back to its maker, who sells the cargo for scrap or holds it for ransom, whatever is more profitable."

Ignoring the jinking of the viewscreen, he leaned over and muttered, "Are you sure they don't hold it for a ‘liberation fee'?"

Avva sounded offended when she replied, "Hey, I gave you a chance to back out – more than one, as I recall. Now find a place to sit down, or if you must stay here, grab those straps behind the chair and hang on. I'm dropping the gravity and sending the power to the engines."

He held on and watched as the ship dodged left, right, spun, but whatever she did the abduction machine moved into their path, trying to suck them in.

Out of nowhere, she asked, "You aren't going to be sick, are you?"

Tragan frowned. "Sick? Why? Is this abduction machine sending some virus towards us? How?"

"Be sick as in to purge, to throw up, to-"

He snorted and said archly, "Naglons don't do such things."

"Great, neither do Sast. So this shouldn't upset your stomach…"

The controls flicked under her fingers too fast to follow, and suddenly they were diving towards the pursuing ship, wiggling, spinning.

She murmured, "Almost there…now!"

The maw rushed towards them, then the Flea somehow twisted to one side and missed it; there was a grinding shriek of metal on metal from the hull, the engines wavered, and then all noise was cancelled out by the hum of the gravity plane.

Avva sat frozen; Tragan whispered, "What did you do?"

In a normal tone she replied. "Sheared off their left front sensor, then turned on the gravity plane. If we can stay in the empty space in their sensor grid while we back off, it's as though we vanished into thin air."

"Why didn't you vanish into thin air? Go into hyper?"

"No time to calculate. Shhhh…"

Her fingers marched again, and the abduction machine reappeared, moving in a straight line under them – and away.

"It's staying on course…it's moving away. OK, I'm laying in an automatic course to get us up and out of this space lane, then I can start the final hyper calculations for Arx."

Aha, thought Tragan. Aloud, he said, "So, we are going to Arx?"

She pushed back from the controls and rubbed both hands over her face. "You've convinced me. Right now, I need a drink."

She looked up at him and asked, a bit wistfully, "And I suppose Naglons don't drink?"

He looked thoughtful. "Depends on the drink."

"Vacuum packed Orl wine, ten years old?"

Tragan smiled and said, "We drink."

* * *

Things were progressing nicely, Tragan thought. The ship was going to Arx, he had done his gravity plane experiments, his times of 'needing to be alone' had let him work out his rages and work on his schedule in private, and now the Pilot was getting friendlier. Definitely friendlier. He supposed he shouldn't have snubbed her so harshly at the beginning of the trip, but he hadn't known he would be trapped with her for ten days.

Right now she was telling a story about pets, and he admitted to himself that it wasn't much of a chore to smile and follow along. The wine helped.

Avva said, "And then the security forces came in, and I gave them the Spider."

Tragan chuckled. "So instead of your passenger, they arrested your pet?"

"Yes, you know how they can puff up in low-g. But I still had to get my passenger through Customs, so I-"

Tragan could picture exactly what happened next, and almost bent over with laughter. "No, oh, no, don't say it!"

She ignored him, gesturing with both hands, one holding the wine.

"I loaded her into the spider's cage, and wheeled her through Livestock. Nobody knew what a Hoopa Moss Spider looked like, and fortunately my passenger had the right number of legs. I've never heard anyone swear so eloquently while saying nothing but hoopa, hoopa, hoopa – because that's the only noise a Moss Spider makes, after all."

Tragan gestured his approval with his own glass – raising a phantom toast to her. "So you have had pets."

Avva sighed. "Sometimes. But it's a hard life, space. I want to be able to give them the sort of attention they need, and I can't always. You have to choose your pets carefully, something that won't get underfoot at a critical moment."

"True, true," Tragan nodded in agreement. Then he changed the subject.

"It has occurred to me that I have been monopolising the entertainment centre. Is there something you would like to see?"

"Thank you sir, actually there is. I picked up the latest of one of my favourite series on Parakon and haven't had a chance to watch it."

"Well," said Tragan, settling back in his chair, his eyes never moving from Avva's, "perhaps we could watch it together."

"Um," Avva's eyes seemed frozen to his, while her hands beat a nervous dance on the table edge. "It's erotica, actually. It might not be to your taste."

"I would be happy defer to your tastes for an evening. Indeed I should thank you for introducing me to the works of Elhh Morinii and Haeyseus Frahnkow, I'd never heard of them before."

She said with a faraway tone, "They are not appreciated by the general public. Acquired tastes, as it were." Their eyes met with understanding and – attraction? Maybe, maybe, thought Tragan to himself.

She still hesitated.

"Come now, Pilot," here a carefully calculated pause, "Avva, if you know Naglons you surely know that our anatomy does not lend itself to, ah, imposing on other species."

She replied with a hitch, "Um yes, and that other species are not – generally adaptable to you."

Tragan was silent a moment, and then he said, "You're blushing, aren't you?"

"Yes," she almost-whispered.

"Your stripes are turning quite black, it's a striking contrast." Tragan took another sip of the wine, rolled it around in his mouth, and swallowed.

Avva's visible embarrassment grew, and Tragan watched the reaction with pleasure, tasting it as though it were wine as well.

She said as though to herself, "Maybe I could watch it after you leave."

"But I've spent so little time with you on this voyage," Tragan said, and let his voice warm.

She looked at him, startled. "I felt that was by mutual agreement."

"Well, over time my opinion of you have become more my personal opinion of you, and not just of your species. I've had time to relax and become – more myself."

Avva straightened, and adjusted the neckline of her tunic.

"Well then." She dropped her spoon to her bowl, and looked at him – challengingly? Oh yes. "Shall we?"

He nodded with agreement. He was getting through to her, enjoying every tiny crack he found in her armour, or that she let open to him. He looked forward to ripping it wide and letting the precious treasures inside pour out into his hands – soon, soon.

Now for the evening's entertainment.

"Does this have an ER channel?" he asked, settling himself on one side of the couch, across the room, Avva fidgeted with a box in her hand blinking red.

"Um? Yes, it does but … I only have one headset."

Tragan calculated. If she was immersed in the ER, surely it would be a matter of moments to…but no, the ship's course to Arx was not yet fully calculated. So, this would just be a preparatory step. Testing the waters, so to speak.

"Well, hardly fair for me to take it all for myself. Let's use only our own senses."

Avva dropped the title into the translation bin and sat down on the couch beside him. He could feel the faintest warmth from her hip, close to his. And once you got used to it, her waxy smell wasn't all that bad. She spoke to the computer.

"L'Index. Commence program."

It opened with a rather pleasant looking green jungle glade, and a humanoid running across it. Female apparently, smooth-skinned with dark hair and eyes. The soundtrack was naturalistic, animal shrieks and rustling leaves. Then the camera cut to a scuttling insect and – no. The insect came into the shot, chasing the girl, and it was clear that it was on the same scale as her – or bigger.

"That insect chasing her, is it sentient?" Tragan whispered to Avva.

"No, it's an animal," she answered. Her eyes were locked on the screen, which gave Tragan plenty of opportunities to look at her and see her reaction.

"It's considerably larger than she is," he said.

She moved a bit closer to him on the couch. "She's been given fear inducing drugs, otherwise she might turn on the insect and damage it, and that would be a different sort of film entirely."

He rather enjoyed the chasing parts: the hooked barbs along the creature's front legs scratched at the girl's skin in a most enticing manner. Her screams of desperation and panting exhaustion were also quite pleasant.

He peeked at Avva's face and saw her rapt with concentration.

"It looks very vicious, whatever will it do when it catches her?"

"Watch," she whispered.

He turned and saw the insect clawing at the girl, who screamed and fell and rolled and ran again.

"Ah, it almost had her there!" he gloated. "She's bleeding, it won't be long now."

Finally the girl collapsed in another one of those suspiciously well-lit jungle glens, and the insect approached and began to couple with her.

"Mating?" asked Tragan suspiciously. "It can't think that that's a female of its own species, the colour is all wrong.

Avva's head moved closer to his as she said, "It's been drugged too, it would mate with a rock if the rock ran away from it. And then –"

Tragan wasn't particularly interested in this part, the girl seemed to be enjoying herself far too much, raising her hips to the thrust of the beast's ovipositor, writhing and moaning, so he took the opportunity to slip his arm around Avva's shoulders.

She relaxed into his embrace, and said, "For someone who doesn't want to impose, you're being awfully forward." Her eyes never left the screen.

He was watching the screen too, out of the corner of his eye, as he leaned over and breathed into her ear, "Just because I don't want to impose doesn't mean that I can't be sociable."

She sighed and leaned close, and he nuzzled at her, casually enjoying the feel of her body heat, the trusting way she bared her neck so close to his teeth.

"Ah yes," he said. Her near hand stirred, slipping under his tunic, under his shirt. Not that he would get any pleasure out of it, but it seemed best to play along.

He sighed, "Ah yes, oh," and froze. Her hand was doing something, something that shouldn't be happening. He gasped, "But, what are you doing? No!"

Avva's hand paused, but the excitement from it on him grew. "No what?" she asked. "Do you want me to stop? Is this touch unpleasant?"

Tragan was shaking, because what he was feeling was impossible. It was the wondrous, delicate, tickling pull of a Naglon female, but it was coming from Avva's hand on his abdomen

He gasped again, "You can't be doing that! Only another," but then the sensation grew too intense and he couldn't talk, just breathe.

His eyes opened wide, just as the beast on the screen leaned close and took a large meaty bite out of the girl's breast. Blood spurted over its green compound eyes. The girl screamed, shrill and loud, and Tragan gave a little scream too, because what he was feeling was impossible.

Helplessly he panted, "Ah, it's biting her, it's tearing her off in pieces, the insect is eating her, and you, and you!" It couldn't be happening but it was: helplessly he felt himself start to extrude, slipping out, moving inbetween her fingers.

She rolled over and her other hand slid under his clothes, rolling them up, baring his stomach. Now both her hands were … they were …

At the same time, she leaned over him and whispered, "If you want me to stop, I will."

On the screen the beast had captured the girl's arm in one armoured claw, as she screamed and tried to escape its impaling organ. It started to rip her fingers off, one by one, and the joints snapped wetly as it fed.

How could he ask her to stop? He was coming out, out into her hands, between her fingers, that impossible touch that only another Naglon could give, it had been years since he felt this. His own hands were shuddering on Avva's sides without direction. Her hands moved deftly, knowing exactly how to do what they couldn't possibly be doing.

He said desperately, "You're not a Naglon. No, don't stop, but, oh it's so good, it's been," and again he had to stop and catch his breath. It was wonderful and it was terrifying, because his most tender parts were not slipping inside another Naglon's delicate orifices, but between humanoid fingers strong enough to crush and tear.

"Ah, you can feel it can't you? That wonderful tickling, calling you out?"

"Be careful, please, don't, don't pull!" he gasped.

"I don't have to, here you are, all of you," she said, her own voice wet with pleasure. "My my, two hands' worth. Look at you all spread between my fingers now, this must feel good, and how about this?"

He couldn't answer right then, it was too tight inside him. On the screen, the girl's screams continued, as the insect proceeded with its mating and feasting. He continued, every pearl of him slipping out until they were held tense between her fingers, that somehow were moving on him in some impossible way.

"It's devouring her bit by bit, bite by bite. What are you doing? How can you-" and the pleasure rushed over him, so strong that he couldn't see. He started to hyperventilate, gasping for more air, and her mouth came down on his, tasting his breath, whispering in his mouth, blotting out the view of the screen where the insect was rasping the flesh from the girl's ribs with its mandibles.

"I do what pleases you. And later you can please me."

The meaning of the words was lost in the pressure that was starting to build deep inside of him: extruded fully, now it was time for him to withdraw, to pull in. He had to, had to, but he was afraid. His tongue trembled under hers; all of him trembled. He was out, in the cold air, and he didn't enjoy that at all. But the wet busy fingers on him were tugging, stretching him just a tiny bit, twisting, and he could feel every tug moving deep inside him, as the muscles tensed, preparing to pull.

His eyes closed as he heaved, moaned, "Oh please, yes, now, please let me!"

Her mouth left his, whispered in his ear, "Go on, go on, do it now, I'm ready..."

And as the great insect ripped the head from the girl and bathed in her blood, slurping it up, licking the twitching stump, Tragan cried out as he slid, between her fingers, slid in, all the way, and her fingers chased after him and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until he shuddered and batted her hands away.

"No more, no more!" He wrapped his hands around hers and shoved them aside, held them behind her back...and stared into her eyes.

She stared back.

She whispered, "I didn't mean to trespass."

He leaned close, and pressed his cheek to hers, not knowing why, suddenly flooded with warmth. "Oh, oh you didn't."

Behind them, on the screen, the insect was ripping the last shreds of meat from the girl's bones, gnawing at them, cracking them to suck out the marrow.

Slowly, to the sound of the girl's brain being licked from her skull, Tragan took one of Avva's hands from behind her back and looked at it. In the flickering green and red light from the screen, he examined it.

It looked like any other humanoid hand, four fingers, nails, a thumb. But that couldn't be all they were. He whispered, "Show me your hands."

She spread her gleaming fingers wide and the skin between them – split.

No it didn't; it parted, and Tragan could see something moving in the part.

"Look here between the fingers," she held her hand in front of his face, between him and the screen, "what looks like skin, it's"

He finished the sentence, "It's cilia, just like a female Naglon has on her – vestibules." He could see the myriad hair-fine tentacles waving now between her fingers, then lacing themselves together and drawing in, looking like patches of normal skin.

His eyes rolled back to her face, astounded. She smiled, said lightly, "You should see me repair a micro watch with them," and kissed him on the nose.

She went on, "I told you I worked in Naglon space. A few little adaptations like cilia made my leisure time there ever so less tedious."

"I," Tragan swallowed, "you, must not have gotten very much out of that."

"Oh no, the pleasure was all mine." She smiled at him. "If only all my passengers were so open-minded. And asymmetrical."

Later that night, Tragan lay in his bed and did a perverse thing.

He took the gift that he had been given, a wonderful and loving caress, and twisted it into defilement in his mind. He turned her eyes, bathing in the pleasure that she gave, into leering eyes, mocking eyes, spying eyes. He imagined her waiting, preparing to crush him between her fingers, her horribly filthy stinking unclean fingers touching his most intimate parts. He imagined her telling the story of what she had done to him, over and over again, and it following him like some dead carcass chained around his neck, to the end of his days.

He was working himself up for tomorrow. Tomorrow when the program to Arx would be laid into the computer, needing only the stroke of a button to send him there.

No need for Pilot Avva Omet-J after that button was hit.

* * *

The next morning he was all polite attentiveness while his Pilot worked her magic at the controls, until she finally pulled down the shields over them and stood up.

"And there," she said, satisfied. The whuffle of hyper ran through the ship, and they were gone from normal space. "And we're out in six days subjective, a day in normal space to enter Arx orbit, it's a clean system and even the regular autopilot could probably get us in, and then you are free to contact your bank."

He followed her out of the control room, talking. "Six days. However shall we pass the time?"

She turned on one heel, her pale eyes widening. "Oh. Do you have any suggestions? We could discuss Jut Ball. Look at my etchings."

She was standing still but he kept moving, coming right up to her, standing over her and looking down into her eyes. "I thought that perhaps we could play some little games."

"More interesting than Pinch the Pilot?"

Tragan gave a little laugh. "Oh, much more interesting. More elaborate. Something to fully engage all the senses while we are here in hyperspace, unable to contact anyone."

"It sounds like I should get prepared for this – game. What ever shall I wear?"

"Oh, what you have on is fine. Because we're starting now," he said, shoving her to the floor with one hard blow. He knelt over her and slapped a gravity plane to her chest, and turned its control dial several notches to the left. The hissing noise of its function was considerably louder than it had been last time.

Avva gasped, and her hands flailed at the carpet, but the gravity plane was holding her securely against the floor and incidentally weighing considerably more than she did. "I…can't…breathe…" she managed to whisper.

"Half a moment, and we shall be all prepared," Tragan chortled, as he went into his room and came out with a fistful of insulated wire, a bit too stiff for his tastes but still quite adequate for binding. Bind her he did, dragging her into place (he had leverage, she had none), raising the dining table out of the floor under her, and strapping her down. She hadn't quite passed out from the crushing pain on her middle before he said "There now!" and turned off the gravity plane.

Avva inhaled so hard that the plane slid off her and thunked on the table. She tested her bonds, making the wire creak, but he knew what he was doing and she was quite secure. "What…do you always start your games so – abruptly?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I wanted to surprise you," he said, smiling down at her. He leaned over the table companionably, one elbow resting by her head and that hand supporting his head, while he sent his other hand to lightly stroking and caressing the tender ridges of flesh that ran down her face.

She asked, a little breathless still, "And how long have you had this wire, which just happened to be cut in just the rights lengths for binding, on hand? And a gravity plane ready to hold me down?"

"Oh, a little while, a little while."

She breathed in deeply again, and her wattles under his fingers warmed and started to flush. Tragan whispered, "I've been reading up on your species, the Sast. And now that I have you all to myself, I'm dying to do some personal investigations."

Avva whispered back, "Well, as it happens I'm all tied up at the moment, so be my guest."

Ah, he loved this, the trust with which she placed herself in her hands. "I've read that these ridges on your face are very sensitive parts of your body, am I correct?"

"Yes," Avva said in a shuddering voice, her eyes going out of focus and then locking back on his face. Tragan leaned closer, until she could feel his breath on her face.

"Erogenous zones, in fact. That flush is a mating display, isn't it? And they are getting warmer under my touch, yes, definitely warmer," he said softly, taking one of the loose lobes of flesh that hung from the edge of her jaw and twisting it, tugging at it gently. She pushed her shoulders back against the table, arching her back, and his hand started sliding up and down her chest.

Not that he left her face unattended: it was now his lips that feathered over her, caressing her, feeling the slightly rough flesh glowing with heat. Her face was pale, making the proud purple-black ridges stand out even more. He watched a bead of sweat roll down the side of her face, and sent his own narrow black tongue chasing after it, flickering against her and bringing a deep moan from her throat.

By her ear now, he whispered, "You're almost hot under my lips, do you know that?"

"Oh, Tragan…that feels…"

"And these lobes are supposed to be particularly vulnerable to attention. Let's find out."

His lips were at the edge of his jaw, and he drew one of her lobes into his mouth. Gently, he sucked it in, pressed it flat against his teeth, teased it back and forth with his tongue. His free hand was now busily making its acquaintance of some of his captive's other erogenous zones.

He raised his face from hers just a little, stretching the bit of flesh in his mouth, tilting his head back enough that he could see Avva's face. Her eyes were closed, lips parted in ecstasy.

"Yes," she sighed in delight. He pulled his face back a bit further, clenching her between his teeth, and heard the sharp intake of her breath as the pleasure became diluted with pain.

"No, oh no," but still she sighed it, still she writhed under his hands in pleasure.

He paused for a single delicious instant, watching her balanced perfectly between those two sensations.

Then he set his teeth and started to pull, hard. Her eyes flew open and she screamed, he felt her jaw flex as she tried to pull herself loose, tossing her head. He clamped both hands to the sides of her face, holding her still, and kept biting.

She howled, "Stop, stop that hurts, stop!"

The tough flesh under his teeth began to break, and he tasted her blood in his mouth for the first time. It was sweet and sugary and delicious, and he looked forward to tasting more. He sucked hard at her bleeding flesh, and kept biting. She kept screaming. He stared into her fear clouded eyes so close to his own, savouring her taste and her terror together.

All good things must come to an end, alas: his teeth finally met in her flesh, and as he pulled there was one last stringy tug between his teeth, and the lobe was loose.

Avva was flat on the table, staring at him, frozen with horror. Deliberately, he leaned over her, chewed slowly and carefully at her severed flesh, and then audibly swallowed.

So did she.

"Well," he said, watching the sick terror rising in her eyes, pulling back a little to watch her arms and legs fight uselessly at her bonds, "that certainly was an opening game move that neither of us will forget. Ever."

He smiled, and his teeth were stained with her blood.

She said unbelievingly, "You – bit it off! You bit off my lobe!"

"Yes. But you have plenty more for me to give my attention to."

Her hands fought her bonds again, and her face went still – too still, too flat. Her voice was flat as she ordered, "Tragan, let me up, right now, untie me."

He leaned close, watching her flinch away, and said, "No, I don't think so."

Her eyes darted around the room – looking for a weapon? – and she said, too loudly, "I need to check our course, I think I might have set the emergence point too close to the-"

An obvious lie. "You set it perfectly, I know. You wanted plenty of uninterrupted time with your passenger. I also wanted time with you. My own special play time."

He could see the frustrated anger rising in her face. A fighter, good! Her facial stripes were paling, stippling with pink as she said, "Tragan, let me up now. There's no way you can land the Righteous Flea yourself."

He actually allowed himself to smirk. "I can access my Arx accounts from space, then I can hire a pilot to ferry out and take me down."

"My employer will not take kindly to you abusing me," she said coldly, "let me up now Tragan, right now or you will be very, very sorry." She was ignoring the bonds and the blood still trickling down her neck. Still trying to give him orders.

So he slapped her. Hard, feeling her ridges under his palm, knocking her head to one side. Considering how sensitive those ridges were, that should hurt quite a bit more than slapping the average humanoid.

Her gasp had an extra bite of pain in it, and he gloried in it.

He stared into her watering eyes and started to explain exactly what was happening.

"I am beginning to think that you are not appreciating the position you are in. You are in hyperspace, so you cannot call for help; you are tied down to a very sturdy table; and you are in the total control of a Naglon who has been without his games for a very, very long time."

Her expression changed, from anger to – regret? Quietly she asked, "Did my hands on you offend you that much? I asked you if you wanted me to stop."

He hit her again. And again, again, rolling her head left and right, slapping with both hands. Then he stopped himself, he had to or he would have slapped his hands raw.

She shrieked, "Stop hitting me!"

He leaned over and snarled in her face, "Did I ask you to put your hands on me, your hands in me?"

She snarled back, "You sure extruded like you wanted me to, you said it yourself, Naglons don't impose on others, and you can't impose on a Naglon! Tragan, stop this game, let me go!"

He stood up straight by the table where she was bound, and said simply, "No."

"I trusted you!" She blinked the tears from her eyes.

"More fool you."

She was still trying to stay in control, find the words that would make him release her. "Red light, Tragan. End of line. End of the routine. Disconnect, safe word, end word, end of game, Avva says let me go, happy birthday."

Tragan recognised the terms of course, but he had no intention of letting her go. "It's not my birthday."

Here eyes searched his face, looking for something. In a little voice, a meek voice, she said, "Please?"

So fast? Tragan found he couldn't object. "Ah now, that's better," he said, as he smiled into her frightened eyes.

Quieter and quieter, her voice squeezing down to a squeak, she said, "Please let me go, please, pretty please with sugar and flowers on top."

He leaned closer, following her voice down, encouraging her. "Go on…"

And she lunged up from the table, her neck stretching several inches father than it should have, and her jagged teeth set and tore in Tragan's face. With a cry, he stumbled back from the table.

Avva shouted, "Computer! Ignore passenger Tragan! Table retract!"

Nothing happened, except for the blood trickling between Tragan's fingers on his cheek.

"Damn," she said regretfully.

Tragan felt the white heat of anger starting in him, and realised that there was no reason to hold back now. The colour rose in his face. "You bit me, you actually drew blood! And I'll have you know, girl, that I deactivated the microphones in here while you were setting the course changes. It's all on manual controls now, and I'm the one in control. I am the master. Of this ship. And of you. And you are going to be sorely sorry that you ever bared teeth to me, you little insignificant Sast creature."

Still she shouted. "Untie me! Now!"

He flung his own blood in her eyes, making her blink with the sting of it. "I am going to break you, every part, body and soul. And by the time I am done, you will beg to call me Master!"

Still she fought the bonds, still she shouted, "Never!"

He started slapping her again, carefully and methodically, saving his hand strength, until her cries of anger were hoarse.

 

* * *

 

Now he could begin.

 

* * *

He let her wear herself out with screaming, let her collapse into exhaustion and finally sleep.

After she seemed nicely settled, he shouted in her ear, "Wake up!" and followed this up with a slap; she came gasping out of sleep looking appropriately terrified.

Ah, lovely.

He looked down at her and said, in a deliberately conversational tone, "I've been examining your machine shop, very nicely stocked, all sorts of clever little drills and burrs and abrasive wheels. And your medical cabinet, what interesting probes and stimulants it has!"

She let her eyes wander over the cabin, ignoring him.

He went on, "But, to tell you something personal about myself, Avva, Avva?

She blinked and acted as though she had just noticed his existence. "Sorry, you were speaking?"

Tragan smiled and said, "You'll regret that insolence. But personally, I've always liked working up close and personal. My hands are my finest tools."

He held them up, displaying them to her, the hard bony knuckles, the short nails and calloused palms.

With elaborate ease, she yawned. Sleepily she murmured, "Wake me when it's-"

Her words were cut off as Tragan slapped one large hand completely over her mouth. Her breath came fast through her nose.

Tragan squeezed her head a little under his hand, and told her, "I am the one who decides whether you wake or sleep now, girl. And whether you breathe or – stop breathing. Do you know how painful it is to be smothered? Let me show you."

With his other hand he pinched her nostrils shut.

She tried to stay still, to be calm, but the urge to breathe was too overwhelming; in seconds she was bucking and heaving, tossing her head, trying to get loose from the wire and from his hard hands over her face.

"My, how you writhe," he said, enjoying every bit of it, even her mouth gnawing against his palm, trying to bite.

Later, he propped some printouts against her bare side, and read from them aloud. As he read, he feathered one hand over her torso, palpating here and there, as though looking for soft spots. He found some too, that hurt when he pressed them, from the way she gulped.

He said, "I've always wanted to read my own obituary, and now I can. I do like this bit about ‘unrepentant monster who tainted half a hundred worlds with his presence,' though. I think it makes a good epitaph. Still, I daresay I have some more tainting to do in the future. What do you think, Avva?"

At the mention of her name, her muscles pulled against the wire, making it creak, but she did answer. Ah, she was learning.

"I'm thinking about the O Corporation, and how every one of its agents, employees, subsidiaries, and sentient drones are going to be out for your head."

His fingers found a particularly soft spot, and dug in. "Oh no, Avva. I have friends on Arx, friends who will be more than eager to help me change my identity and emerge a new Naglon. I intend to escape without paying your employer her blood ransom – or if there is a blood ransom to be paid, I think that you will be paying it."

Her stomach muscles were tense, trying to fight off his invasion. "Big words from a little man."

He withdrew his hand, stood and wandered casually around the room, watching as her eyes followed him. He stopped by the manual control panel.

"I've always admired the flexibility of embedded furniture. Did you know, for example, that with a merest flicker of my fingers, I can start that table you're tied to rotating, or tilting, or say, extending its four corners to make it longer and wider – very, very slowly?"

His fingers moved over the controls, and the table started to move, getting larger, as though extra guests were coming to dinner and room was needed for all of them. But as it moved it stretched Avva, out and across and down, her hips and shoulders taking the pressure first and tensing, fighting it; and then the pulling going on and on, not stopping, very slowly, until he thought he could hear her spine creak. The wire bonds steadily gave their little song of resistance, and so did she, panting through her teeth, silent, tendons standing out in her neck from the pain.

"No screams?" he asked.

Through her teeth, she answered, "I'm saving them for when you do something impressive."

He smiled. "Ah. I do so enjoy a challenge."

* * *

He covered her face while he went into her cabin, closed the door, and did some manual labour; when everything was arranged to his satisfaction in the main cabin, he uncovered her and started the table rotating upright, so that she was in a standing position.

She gritted her teeth as her weight was suspended from her painfully lacerated wrists, but her tone was falsely casual as she said, "You know Tragan, with this table rotated upright, I'm taller than you."

Coldly, he ordered, "Look down."

Avva kept her eyes locked on the wall. "No."

He stepped to the table and took a grasp in her cropped black hair, pulling her head forward and down; she resisted, and he could feel the hair sliding through his fingers. Damn, she was slippery! Maybe a good scrubbing with a mild acidic solution.

He ordered again, "I will pull your hair out by the roots, girl, if you don't look down!"

With an abrupt lack of resistance she did, and he bent his own head to see the perfect look of horror on her face. Ah, exquisite.

She gasped, "Oh. No, you can't. No, Tragan, put them back, back in their cases! Not those! Not my scrolls!" He took a step forward, deliberately, and she out and out howled, "Move your feet, you oaf, you're standing on one!"

Tragan laughed.

She went on desperately, the words spilling out, ignoring the hand still locked in her hair, "Tragan, they're priceless! Gallmian only did eleven of them! They're art, they're for all the world, I've left them to the museum on Alchema Four when I've, when I am dead! You could sell them for a fortune!"

Deliberately, Tragan ground his foot into the scroll, crinkling the heavy reed paper. His eyes never left Avva's tormented face.

"Nothing you own or touch could ever be of the slightest value to me."

Her eyes left the scroll and darted to his face, hard and angry. "Including yourself?"

He slapped her, then held himself back. He hadn't meant to do that.

But her eyes had returned to the paper on the floor. "You can't damage them, it's unthinkable!"

Tragan let the words roll out now, let himself enjoy the way they washed over her and drove her frantic. "Oh, I'm not going to damage them. You are. You are going to hang over them and you are going to drip, little girl, ruin them with your tears, your sweat, your blood; you are going to void yourself on them, destroy them utterly, and then I am going to burn whatever is left and make you eat the ashes."

She screamed – and then froze, her eyes stretched wide, desperately trying to contain her own tears. He watched in deep pleasure as a single tear grew on the surface of her eye – and fell, and a line of script started to smear.

"And now, just to get the juices flowing, so to speak…"

He got to work with the whip he had crafted out of judiciously frayed wire, striking underhand, and soon more than tears were spattering the papers.

* * *

Screams, screams, lovely screams, that resolved themselves into an electronic alarm as Tragan hauled himself from sleep. He shouted, "Alarm, off!" and there was silence.

He stretched in the soft sheets, enjoying a last moment of leisure before the day's work began – not that it was day. "There's not much time left, I suppose the sacrifice of a few sleep cycles is worth it for the," he yawned, "quality of the final result."

As he rose and started putting himself in order, he continued to talk to himself. Too bad Freeth wasn't here; he would have been someone to talk to. "And she's ever so much more frightened when I wake her late at night."

He stopped before he opened the door, and growled, "But still she refuses to call me Master. Let us see if I can change her mind tonight."

In the main cabin, the only noise was the wheeze of her breath; she had damaged her throat with her screams, and it was swollen.

Softly, Tragan said, "Can you hear me, Avva?"

She didn't move and he slapped her; she still didn't move, but the wheeze of her breath sped up. Then her bleeding lips slowly parted.

"You can just…go to Hell, Tragan…I'll be waiting there for you." Again her limbs pulled at the wire, and it creaked. He was getting rather fond of that creaking actually.

"Now now, don't sound so depressed. I have the loveliest little game in mind. Open your eye and see."

Her remaining eye stayed stubbornly shut. Quite calmly he said, "Open it or I'll cut off your eyelid."

It opened and he smiled down into it, seeing the pupil contract at the sight of his face. "That's better. It's these little dice I found, quite adorable." He held them up between his fingers, one white and one black. "I'm going to roll them and let them decide what happens to you next. You see, every number on this die has been assigned to an action, and every number on this one to a part of your – present anatomy. So, rather than let myself fall into the rut of the same old, same old, I can add a delicious note of random chance, of unpredictability, to our little game. Won't that be special?"

She spat, accurately; a fragment of one of her teeth shot out and bounced off the dice.

Tragan beamed. "And still you rebel, still you are determined to fight me! Delightful."

He moved his hand beside her head; helplessly her face turned to follow it, trying to focus on the tiny dice.

"Now let's see," he said, and rolled them; one got stuck in a puddle of blood, but both still did land with one face up, so he charitably decided that it counted.

He pretended to consult with a list he pulled from his pocket. "Seven and eleven, and seven is…and eleven…oh my, how diabolical! These dice certainly have it in for you, little Sast."

He smiled tenderly. "But I should allow you to be involved in the process as well."

He reached out and took hold of her forearm, feeling her flinch. "I know most of the tendons in your right arm have been pulled loose, but I think you can still rotate the wrist, yes? So let's put the dice in your hand now, you won't be needing any fingers, and just tilt it…"

He guided her flopping hand to release the dice; they clattered along the table and came to rest against her side. Of course, she could not see them there, and she strained to raise her head.

Tragan made a face of feigned horror. "Oh, these dice really don't like you. How dreadful!"

He reached into the tray of metal tools that sat at the foot of the table, and heard Avva's breath rasp in and out faster and faster…

Ah, those dice were a lovely frisson to the game: again and again he rolled them, one and two at a time, on the table against her side, across her torn and bruised torso, on the floor behind her head so she could not guess what the numbers were, before he used them to guide his terrible, hungry hands at their work.

At a later time, after she had escaped him into unconsciousness, he methodically pinched her until she roused again.

"Wake up, Avva," he said, pinching, pinching.

Only her lips moved as she whispered, "Tragan…someday….a Sast will kill you for this." Her limbs were too weak to fight the wire any more.

Ignoring her useless threat, he announced, "You know, I can't remember the last time I had a nice, well-done steak."

Her lower lip shook; she bit it to keep it still.

"Oh now girl, don't bite your lip like that, it deprives me of the pleasure of seeing it quiver with fear. There now, let go, that's better." He leaned forward and pinched her lip, pulling it, stretching it loose from her teeth so that he could watch it move, then stepped back and continued. Her eye opened and she stared at him, too frightened to close her mouth; her lip shivered deliciously.

"And it occurred to me, that right here on the dining table I have a lovely selection of the tenderest, most succulent steaks imaginable."

He showed her the saw he had found in the medical kit, tilting it back and forth, admiring the lovely sheen of finely balanced sharp metal.

"Can you see this saw I'm holding? Very nice balance to it. But then it occurred to me, why would I need to remove the steaks before cooking them?"

He showed her the blowtorch, lit it and sent a gout of flame blasting across the room, and the screams began. Those lovely, lovely screams.

* * *

But finally, the time came. He rose from the floor where he had rolled the dice and walked around the upright table, admiring his work.

What was left of Avva was barely recognisable as humanoid: limbs shorn and cauterised, lying in a circle of dried body fluids, deep belly wounds leaking their acids down to the hopelessly stained rug, head lolling on one shoulder (he had severed the tendons at the back of her neck). She smelled of rot and her own personal reek. She was like a deeply flawed gem, bruised and broken, in a steel frame.

Her breathing was laboured, hitching. Her heartbeat was failing. Poor circulation, her colour was very bad. She was dying.

He slapped her, ordering "Wake up. Wake up Avva," but he didn't expect her to respond. She could no longer hear. Her wheezing breath continued, labouring, unchanged. But this time, even when he pressed a soldering iron to her cheek and heard the flesh sizzle, she did not react.

"Avva? Ah, I do believe you have stepped out of my reach. And so I am the only one here to appreciate what a magnificent job I've done."

He enjoyed telling her about the mutilations she could not see, only feel, and kept on reflexively talking about them, even though she was beyond response. "I'm particularly proud of your face, do you know that? I burned off every inch of your wattles, I took your eyes and your teeth and your ears and your tongue. It's like a raw wound on the front of your head. It goes nicely with your stumps."

He touched his lips to the patch of unmarred flesh between what had been her breasts, and whispered so she could feel his mouth moving on her, "Oh but still alive, after all I've done!"

He spoke to her intimately. "And I listen to your heart, and I can hear it faltering, hear it failing, but still your spirit defies me. Such a pity that we couldn't spend more time together, I do believe we could have gone on like this for ever so long. But now-"

But now…now he spun the narrow blade between his fingers, and impulsively pressed the flat to his own lips, before sending it to its task.

He slid it accurately between her ribs, up and in.

"With this blade, I kiss your heart," he whispered.

He pulled the knife loose, and listened again as she went into her final struggle, her heart pumping away her life with each contraction, the hot blood coursing down her side.

Again and again he filled his hand with her heart's blood and smeared it over his forehead and cheeks, over his neck, bathing in it, luxuriating in it, licking her life from his fingers. "Ah, and I shall miss this, the feel of your blood on my face, the smell of it, you do know it's the most pleasant smelling thing about you, the taste of it on my lips." All while listening to her heart beat slower…and slower…and a final flutter.

And silence.

"Goodbye Avva," he smiled, and kissed her still chest.


	3. Act III: Paper

The garbage disposal unit whined overtime, dissolving bone and meat and hair and the hopelessly stained carpet. That carpet was almost as bad as the corpse: it was so soaked that it practically bled by itself, and had to be mopped up by hand. He scrubbed and steamed, and then scrubbed and steamed himself. And when the ship finally fell into normal space, he was sitting at the controls, calm and cool and collected, waiting for the world to come to him. His fingers did not touch the preset controls; instead they toyed with a pair of tiny dice. Call them his new good luck charms.

The Righteous Flea reached out and accessed the Arx systems. Paging quickly through the Welcome-to-Arx messages, he waited for the computer to announce, "Welcome to Arx Information Central. How may I direct your query?"

Tragan asked, "Reference companies, First Arx International Bank, Global Trust of Arx, general location?"

The answer was, "Both companies presently active on Arx. Stock quotes?"

"No. Reference individuals, Puh Freeth-Mill, Tayic Booc, general location?"

"Freeth-Mill marked relocated, Booc marked T City, Central Continent, Arx. Contact Booc?"

Tragan considered. "Cancel search. No, new search, Ammos Corporation, general location?"

"Company currently active on Arx. Stock quotes?"

"No. Cross reference, Ammos Corporation, Tayic Booc, present position?"

The computer dropped into a biography without prompting. "Tayic Booc is Vice-President of Experimental Research at Ammos Corporation. He was born in"

Tragan cut it off. "Cancel search."

Then he smiled. "Ah Tayic, coming up in the world, eh? But you owe me a favour. And I intend to collect. You're about to make a scientific breakthrough, which you'll probably call the Booc Gravity Plane knowing you, you vain puppy. But even you will be able to figure this one out: I have a working device and the manuals."

He pictured gravity bombs that sought their targets, soldiers flying over battlefields and striking deep into civilian territory, battleships slipping through space undetected, buildings falling straight up and destroying themselves. And he pictured himself, with a brace of the finest, fiercest beasts in the galaxy on his leashes, striding out to the hunt, and the prey, all long-legged and bare and screaming, how the prey would run from him! Oh and he would not run to the hunt, no, he would fly!

"Now, should I call Tayic now, or from planetside?"

He considered, and then he rolled the dice; he tingled inside every time he heard them clatter.

"Planetside, then. Ah Avva, I'll think of you every time I see these dice. Computer, viewscreen on."

He watched as Arx, great and gravid and red, swelled in his view. Slowly he drifted towards it, letting the automated landing program do all the work. To himself he mused, "I wonder if it's hunting season on Arx."

Then something odd happened. The centre of the planet grew a hatch, that opened, and he started moving towards that square of blackness.

He scowled. "Computer, what is that square distortion in the planetary disc? Orbital sail?"

The useless machine's answer was, "Reference not understood. Please provide more data."

"Right there, it's, it's-" What was happening? He frantically flipped his eyes over the banks of controls he barely understood.

Arx in his centre screen began to distort, to bow. The Flea was moving too, moving down. "The ship's being pulled towards it!" A weapon, a blast crater? He didn't understand! It couldn't really be there, so maybe he wasn't looking at the planet itself?

"Computer, current orientation of ship!"

"The Righteous Flea is moving towards Arx in standard re-entry position, engines first."

And he finally understood, when he saw the tiny yellow ship that seemed to be darting directly at him.

"Engines first, that isn't Arx, it's Arx's – reflection! There's another ship out there, pulling this one in!"

He hesitated, hands fluttering over the locked controls, uncertain of what to hit. Then a grapple leaped out of the darkness and seized the ship, and yanked so hard that he went flying, head ringing on the deck.

He got up, shaking himself, making sure he wasn't cut. "Oh my head. Somebody is going to pay for that, in blood!" And more insult, he could hear the outer door opening and people moving around in the main room. "I've been pulled into the other ship. Who's there?"

He stomped out, shoes ringing on the newly bare deck, and furiously demanded, "What is the meaning of - this?"

He cut off whatever was going to follow the word 'this', because the intruder was Avva. Were Avva.

But no: his eyes traced the lines of their ears, the hang of their wattles, and saw that they were actually different people. Not Avva. But Sast, no doubt about that. Two of them, dressed in plain grey, and each with a lethal looking weapon holstered at her side.

He went on, "What do you Sast want? You are Sast, I recognise you."

The first one said, looking around, "Where's the carpet?"

"Why did you take me out of my landing pattern? Who's in charge here?" Tragan snapped.

The Sast to the rear pulled her weapon and shot him in the groin, casually. He screamed as his nerves took the weapon's charge and shrilled agony down his legs. Collapsing, thrashing on the floor, he was helpless to stop them as they manacled his hands together behind his back and dragged him out of the ship, one hand at each elbow.

They dropped him on the deck outside, and he knelt, gasping, trying to get his wind back. He looked around, trying to locate himself.

It was a distressingly industrial looking place: his ship rested on a bare field of steel plates, with various pieces of bracing and scaffolding standing here and there. Workers swarmed around him, carrying parcels and wheeling equipment; robots worked alongside them. He looked up, and saw much the same on the ceiling - and also more Sast walking around up there. More gravity plane applications?

He forced himself back to his feet, ignoring the pain, and roared, "How dare you manacle me! How dare you take my ship out of landing pattern! I demand to know who has brought me here!" His face was black with rage.

His two abductors both looked to his left, and he did as well. "She did," one of them said.

He looked and his breath stopped.

What he had thought was one of the pieces of equipment being moved across the floor was actually a person, or a creature, surrounded by more Sast. She picked her way across the deck, her oval bulk and upper torso managing to move gracefully. Four heavy legs emerged from the left side of her body, each one tipped with a tusk, and on the other side seven shorter, thinner ones worked double-time to keep her moving evenly.

One of the Sast murmured, "And now, you're either going to say ‘That's the biggest woman I ever saw in my life', or-"

He stared up at the face looming over him. It was red, and both eyes were to one side, one somewhat above the other; the other side of her face was a mass of purple fringe. Her hair was ash blue, and trailed on the deck around her. Her arms flexed, and her tendrils, as she tilted her head to look at him more closely.

The other Sast said, "Or, ‘that's the most asymmetrical woman I ever saw in my life.'"

She was beyond asymmetrical; the ordering of her limbs and face hinted at some strange and alien geometry, that the mind tried to follow and grew lost in. He had never seen a woman like her. He breathed in the perfume of her and it seemed to catch at his heart.

Tragan whispered, "That's the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life."

The two Sast looked at each other, and the first said, "Points for style, anyway."

She smiled, baring large lopsided fangs - how charmingly jagged they were! - and said, "I brought you here."

Her voice was thunder, and he let it roll over him. He pulled the shreds of his dignity around him and announced, "I am Tragan. May I ask who I have the pleasure, the great pleasure, of addressing?"

Her eyes - one green, one green-yellow - blinked one after the other. Her answer rolled off the ceiling, adding a portentous echo.

"My name is Prime Whi-M'tren Omet-J. I am the Leader of the O Corporation, and main genetic shareholder in the Sast species. Avva was my daughter. You killed her."

"Avva who?" asked Tragan, still trying to recover from the Prime's overwhelming presence. And failing.

"Come now. She took the contract to pick you up, she contacted us to say that she was on her way with you," rumbled the giant woman-beast.

Tragan stuck his chin in the air; he had already planned for this. "I won this ship in a game of dice on Parakon, I don't know what you're talking about. Clearly your Avva failed at her contract, and lost her ship in the bargain."

The vast head bowed to stare down at him. "She did not fail, Tragan. You did. Would you like to hear a message?" She tossed her head, hair flying, and spoke into the air, "Audio feed to me, please."

The audio started with, "This message is for ex-Vice Chairman Tragan, to be played upon his arrival in the first Sast ship to receive him."

The voice was distorted, but female, and Tragan recognised it. He lunged against his captors who still had him by the elbows.

He shouted, "I know that's you, Katyan Glessey – or should I say, Onya! That filter can't fool me!"

The Prime looked at him, just a look, and he closed his mouth. He wished he hadn't shouted, but to hear that voice again-! She said only, "Play message."

Tragan, the Sast and the Prime all listened with great care.

"This recording has been filtered, Tragan, so there's no way to prove who is speaking. But you know who I am. I am the person who gave your name and location to the O Corporation, and told them how to get you out. Your trial has been delayed, because the list of your crimes was so huge and so revolting – and yet, all carried out under the legal shield of Parakon Corporation business – that I needed time to think of what should be done to you. It is my duty to clean up unpleasant messes, even ones I did not have a hand in creating. And the President backs me on this, Tragan. Believe me.

"The lives you destroyed, they can never be brought back. But the Sast make something of a mission out of changing people, Tragan, and I hope that they can change you. If not, well, the recidivism rate of people given into their care is amazingly low. They will kill you if they have to. I almost hope they do."

Tragan's face convulsed and puffed with anger. "You unspeakable slime, how could you do this to me!?"

The Prime swayed her tendrils in some way Tragan couldn't decipher. "She knew what she was doing. So did Avva. My dear daughter, with the so-strange tastes."

All of the Sast, the two holding Tragan and the other onlookers, laughed.

She went on. "But I'll admit, she can find the most fascinating material in the most unpromising places."

One of the Sast holding Tragan coughed, then announced, "Prime, he destroyed the carpet in the Flea."

The Prime sidled in place, her mismatched feet tapping, and her fanged smile disappeared. "Well, well! I'll admit, we were not anticipating the carpet being destroyed. She'll be furious."

"She - who?" asked Tragan. Things were going past him too quickly to follow. "Glessey? I don't know what you're talking about! I told you, I won this ship at dice!"

"Well, here comes someone who can teach you some new games." The Prime gestured with three shapely talons, and Tragan's guards turned him to his right. He saw a large piece of equipment being offloaded from the underside of the Flea - his ship, he reminded himself, his, never heard of this Avva woman, no idea what they were talking about…

"What are you doing?" he snapped. "That metal tank, you took it out of my ship, didn't you? I don't know what it is, but it's my property!"

The tank had an elaborate base of controls and tubes and lights, and seemed to have been in the ship - under the main room? The top was opened, and something inside reached up and punched a hand through the thick layer of jelly that filled the interior. It worried and tore at the gelatine, and the other Sasts were careful to stand aside and not help until the nude figure climbed out through the ragged hole, spat a mouthful of goo back into the tank and then stood there, wiping her eyes clear.

Tragan's mouth fell open, and through numb lips he whispered, "…my property…"

Avva shoved her sodden mass of wild hair back, sneezed, and blotted her nose on the back of her bare arm. She smiled up at the Prime, then at the other Sast. She smiled broadest of all at Tragan.

"So nice to see you all. I presume you snagged him before he made landfall?"

"Certainly, my sweet. You gave us plenty of advance warning," said the Prime, flicking some long tendrils out and over Avva. "But your hair looks like you flew from Parakon to Arx with it hanging out the port!"

The impossibly alive woman shrugged. "It always grows wild in the tank." The she took two steps closer, her wet feet sticking to the deck, and said, "Hello, Tragan. It's me again."

Her eyes were alight with pure, sweet delight at the sight of the horror and confusion on his face. With a mental wrench, he pulled himself together and said, "I…who are you?"

She punched him hard on the arm, right where the nerve surfaced against the bone, and the manacles jingled as the tingling ran to his fingers.

She said, "I'm back to play Pummel the Passenger, now that Pinch the Pilot has run to its final conclusion. My, how you made me suffer! Unique pains, the likes of which I have never felt before. I'm impressed with how resourceful you were, working with only the materials on hand."

Tragan stared at her, and his feigned assurance ran out into confusion. He whispered, "Who…how, are you? How can you be here?"

She smiled at his question. "How am I? Not bad, considering that I was tortured to death while being telepathically connected to this, my backup body. When you finally finished me off, I just withdrew and waited in the suspension medium for the Flea to be pulled in by the Sast. If the Sast hadn't intercepted you, I would have come popping out through the floor while you were landing, and wouldn't you have been surprised then!"

Tragan blinked, trying to understand. He didn't understand. "What…why wait?"

"I'm sorry?" Avva asked, as politely as though they were at a party on Parakon, not nude and manacled on a spaceship respectively.

Tragan spoke slowly, trying to reason it out as he spoke. "There were two of you…in the ship. All this time. You could have escaped. Telepathy, so you knew what was happening to that other Avva all the time. You could have freed yourself at any point and stopped me and why didn't you?!"

Avva looked taken aback. "But that wouldn't have been playing by the rules! You caught me, we played." She smiled with delight. "Now I've caught you."

Tragan thrashed, kicking, trying to get away from the guards.

"Oh stop that Tragan," Avva scolded.

He lunged backwards and almost tore loose, but another arrived to hold him still. He stood there, panting, then went into another fit of fighting. "Let me GO!" he howled.

Avva asked, "Go where? You are on a Sast ship, there's nowhere to run. My mother here has eleven legs and is three times your height; she'd have you before you ran a hundred steps!"

Tragan froze, staring at the smiling face staring down at him: he knew that expression she wore, that of a predator savouring the helplessness of its prey.

Her giant voice rumbled. "And how I'd enjoy chasing him. I could kick him and stomp on him and bite him and…"

Again the Sast laughed. Avva made an exaggerated gesture of shame.

"Mother, you're embarrassing me. But now Tragan, I have you all to myself, and all my fellow Sast here to help me. Ah, sweet Tragan."

Tragan flinched from that word, as he had not from all the Sast blows; that word and the expression that went with it. "Sweet? You dare call me…"

One of the other Sast said, "You're shivering, Avva, take a robe."

Avva murmured thanks as she draped it around herself. Then she said, "But I'm not shivering, I'm thinking so hard I shake. Tragan, the things you did to me, and oh, the things I shall do to you in return!"

The Prime folded her hands together, fingertip to fingertip; Tragan remembered Avva making the same gesture. "As is proper; you gave yourself to him, so shall he be given to you in turn. It's a fascinating method of judging a man's measure. I often think of the Earth philosopher, Mark Twain, who said the main difference between an animal and a sentient was that if you took an animal out of the gutter, fed and cared for it, and were always kind to it, the animal would not turn around and bite you."

Avva rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know; you've quoted that to me often enough."

The Prime continued, "But, you should know …"

Avva looked at her mother, then shot sharp glances at the other Sast, all of who started to sidle and look away.

"What? What?"

One of the Sast leaned over and whispered in Avva's ear, and her mouth formed an O of surprise.

She almost wailed at Tragan, "You destroyed the carpet?! My carpet!"

A part of Tragan wanted to laugh at her ridiculous expression, but that part of him was smothered up by the part that was screaming. Then something snapped, and he lashed out with his words.

"I…I…I destroyed EVERYTHING! I killed you, I destroyed you, your Gallmian originals, and that carpet! And I enjoyed it," he snarled. What was the point in hiding it?

"The calligraphy was counterfeit, it was there for you to destroy. All the records showed that you had no eye for art." Avva breathed in deeply. "But the carpet!"

Tragan shouted, on the edge of despair in his confusion, "It was the most hideous carpet I have ever seen in my life!"

Avva paced in a little circle. "But it was mine. The carpet I truly valued. That I cannot forgive."

She came close to Tragan, very close, too close, and her hand slid under his jacket. "Don't touch me! Stay away!" he ordered, and reared backwards, but the guards were there shoving him forward as her hand found his pants pocket and withdrew - the dice.

She looked down at them in her hand and sighed, "Ah, and here they are. I thought you'd keep them."

She stepped back a pace and squatted on her heels. She shook the dice in her hand, and even over the rumble of the machinery he could hear them click one against the other.

"So, Tragan. Let's play a little game."

His heart seemed to wither in his chest.

"Undo his manacles."

The Sast forced Tragan to his knees, facing her, and undid the manacles; then four of them had to lean on him to keep him on his knees, hold him back from strangling Avva where she knelt.

Avva politely requested, "Just one arm behind his back please."

Tragan growled, bestial, fighting, "I'll tear your heart out with this one hand! Let me GO!"

They finally got him pinned, one arm twisted painfully behind his back and one free.

She held her own hand out flat before his face, with the dice held in between her fingers.

"No, Tragan. First the game. The game is called Want. We roll a die apiece, and whoever gets the lower number gets what they want. Doesn't that sound fun? So Tragan - what do you want?"

"I want my freedom!" he rasped, lunging again at the confining hands on him.

Avva smiled, and said, "I want your pain, your suffering, your body and your life. I want all your money, all your property, all your knowledge and your immortal soul. Everything that is yours, everything that is you, Tragan, shall be mine to do with as I please."

She sniffed, and looked at the dice. "And all you want is your freedom - really, I'm almost insulted. You could at least have asked for the Flea. You could have asked for me, or five of me -"

"I want-" but she interrupted his interruption.

"Too late now, you wanted your freedom, and you shall have it. If the dice favour you."

She clicked the dice together in her hand, rolled them in a little circle around her palm. She batted her eyelashes at him; he remembered pulling those eyelashes out one by one with a pair of tweezers. In the background, the Sast chuckled.

"Shall we roll together, then?"

He looked at the deck; tried to blot out the alien noises around him, the bustle, the feel of the Sast hands pinning him down. This was it; this was his destiny. The rest of his life to be decided by two little bits of wood and how they fell on the deck.

He looked up, into Avva's eyes. He reached out, slowly, and took the white die.

"Together," he said, and they rolled.

He did not look down. She did, and clapped her hands together in glee, laughing.

He closed his eyes in misery, as the hard Sast hands picked him up and dragged him away.

* * *

They took him down in a lift, then through a series of rooms equipped with the most varied sorts of equipment. His sick eyes evaluated every piece of it, every chain and blade and clamp and needle.

He fought them of course, yelling, "This means war! War between the Naglon and the Sast! We'll wipe you out, burn you out of your orbits and smash your babies to bits! Let me GO!" Their cool reply was, "The Naglons think you died on Parakon, remember?"

But underneath, he really didn't know how he was going to get out of this.

He was shivering deep inside as they brought him into a large bay. "Get him on the restraint rack," one ordered, and they wrestled him into position. After removing the manacles and stretching him out, the same Sast said "Computer, close restraints," and cold metal closed over him, wrists, ankles, and chest.

As the guards left, one said, "Avva should be along in a minute. While you're waiting, feel free to look over the equipment we've got in this bay, and imagine how she'll be using it. On you."

He dropped his head back on the table, ignoring the little flare of pain from the impact. He whispered to himself, trying to spark himself up, "Got to escape, got to get away, got to-"

But no, the door was opening and closing behind his head, and he could tell who it was from the sounds of the wet footsteps on the deck.

Avva was still in the thin robe. It clung to the wet patches on her body. She looked down on him and smiled.

"I'm afraid there wasn't time to send for any insulated wire to tie you down with. Later, I think. Later. It does creak so delightfully under stress, don't you think?"

With all the force he could exert in his voice, he ordered, "You are going to let me go."

Avva flicked her eyebrows. "Or what? You'll kill me? You already did that." She came close to him, almost close enough, and stared into his eyes. "Who do you think you're dealing with, anyway?"

He stared at her, at her impossibly healed face; even the wattle he had bitten off was back. Of course. "You…"

Avva whispered to him, intimately. "You think we are a young race, Tragan, but we are old, very old. The names change, but our souls remain the same. Many times have I died, many times have I risen. I have searched the stars for meaning and the seas for truth, and found that the universe is bleak and cold and eternally numb, and only such sensation as we can draw from it makes it real and worth living in. But right now…right now…" She stepped back from him and the rack moved, rotating from its slanted position to vertical.

"What?" asked Tragan.

"Just tucking you away in a nice stasis field while I get cleaned up and changed. And make some plans for you. After all, you only had six days to work on me; I can have six, or sixty, or six hundred, as I please. Whatever it takes. I should make plans to match the scope of my work."

The rack started to slowly descend straight down into the floor; Tragan wondered wildly if there were grinding blades underneath, starving animals to rip his flesh. He shouted up at her, standing looking at him, "Whoever you are, you'll fail, girl, I know that you'll fail! You'll never break me! Never defeat me!"

He was completely enclosed, under the floor, and faintly he heard Avva say, "Computer, activate stasis field." The sound was cut off.

'Bloo-'

He was rising again; it seemed like no time had passed. He'd been in stasis, of course.

He rose higher, and there was Avva: her wild hair neatly trimmed now, clad in a black single piece garment that left her arms bare. There were several tool belts strapped around her waist, and they bristled with (he swallowed) the most appalling collection of tools. Grippers, reamers, scrapers, piercers …

The table kept rising, until his feet were level with the floor, or a little above it. Avva looked up at him, studying him.

"Guess who, Tragan?"

"You - Avva." He caught at himself, slowed his breathing, calmed his face's bubbling with an effort of will. "Love your haircut. Pity about the face under it."

She smiled again. "So nice to see you again, Tragan."

"How long did you keep me in stasis?" he inquired.

"Two years."

Tragan's jaw tensed. Two years!

Avva continued, "Which gave us time to clean out all your hidden bank accounts, free any blackmail victims who were still under your influence, and make all the most careful preparations for you."

Two years…she could have done all that.

"Or maybe," she turned around and started sauntering around the chamber, examining its various furnishings, "maybe it's only been two hours. Maybe I've only had time for a quick bath and a haircut, and have come in here to start my exercise program of the day on your body."

"You unclean animal!" he snarled. "I'll skin you alive for this, I'll turn you inside out and screaming, I'll space you and haul you back and do it again!"

"I thought you liked animals. You'll be giving me ideas if you carry on like that. No need for temper."

She came forward and touched the warts of his face, running her fingers through his crinkled facial hair. "There are so many, many things I want to learn about you, Tragan. Where you can be hurt, how you can be wounded. Your fears, your terrors, all of them, I want them all, every part of them. You're mine. All mine."

He snapped at her fingers.

"Missed me," she said, but while she was saying it he was shouting:

"Computer, open restraints!"

Nothing happened. His head fell back against the rack.

"The computer ignores all prisoners by default," said Avva. "Close but not quite."

He stared at her, all smooth and cool and polished. So different from the rude ragamuffin she had been on the Flea. She even smelled better now. "You planned this all, didn't you? Planned everything. You were the perfect bait to put in my way, something I couldn't resist taking in and devouring."

Avva creased her forehead, looking curious. "Yes, but why? By all standards I should have been someone who could have been your friend: similar tastes in Jut Ball, smut, pets…we could have made a great team."

Tragan choked. "Me, paired with an – artificial?"

Avva shook her head. "That's not it. It's something deeper, I think. Something deep in the core of your personality. Fortunately, I have all the tools I need here to get to that core and gently peel it open – or smash inside, if I feel like it."

Tragan pressed himself back against the rack, his mouth contorting in disgust. "You are repulsive to me. You make me feel filthy. How could I have ever allowed you to touch me!"

Again Avva shook her head no – saying that his disgust was false? "You know Tragan, I've been studying you ever since I was assigned your pickup, and I've found a certain headstrong nature to your sadism. You seem a little bit too eager to leap to the front, to prove yourself, to be the one holding the whip. You're greedy. It makes me wonder about your basic nature,. You see, I think that maybe, deep under it all, you don't really want to be the Master. You want to be mastered."

He looked at her with loathing. "I will never submit to you. I'll die first."

Avva shrugged. "Death may not be an escape for you, you know. Anyway, computer, clamp prisoner jaw."

The rack clamped a cold steel grip to his jaw, and a wire mesh closed over his lips, preventing him from making anything but grunting noises.

Avva spoke to him, in the polite tones of a business meeting, "I've got some people to contact, and since you're going to be having some close contact with them, yes very close, it seems the polite thing to let you listen in and get to know them in advance, so to speak."

Her eyes left his, and she addressed the ceiling. "Computer, contact Research Bay, call to Trur Omet-J."

The voice that answered was male and excited. "Hello Avva! Been expecting your call. Are you all set?"

"I am," and she looked at the helpless Tragan, "we are. Now you said you wanted to test if the interference of two gravity planes set to overload would set up dangerous eddies that could damage organic tissue, correct?"

Trur answered, "Yes, and-"

Tragan fought the gag, tried to talk; he imagined what could happen when those gravity planes started working on him, making parts of his body heavy enough to rip loose, shaking him apart.

Avva interrupted Trur. "Well you know, I think testing three gravity planes at once would be more fruitful, so bring everything you've got to the large work bay on North Red, OK?"

"On my way, Avva."

"Computer, end call. Computer, contact Research Bay, call to Thom Omek-J."

Thom sounded older, less excited. Less enthusiastic, please, Tragan desperately hoped. "Avva, are we on?"

"Yes, and I can't wait to read your paper on the effect of perception distorting drugs on Naglon biological responses. I've got just the test subject here for you."

"Splendid!"

Tragan was holding his eyes open as wide as he could, trying not to let any tears of rage spill, not to look weak in front of her. He knew how vulnerable Naglons were to certain drugs.

Avva seemed to notice his efforts, and stroked her fingers down his cheek; the tug on his eyelid was too much and one tear fell. "Really Tragan, you should be pleased that all these people want to pay attention to you! Computer, end call. Computer-"

Oh no, not another one.

"Contact Guest Wing, Room 2235 please."

The voice that replied was not a voice; it was the buzzing of some hideous chitinous throat, mixed with a synthetic voice that seemed to be the translation.

The voice said, "You have a host for me to lay my eggs in, and now? I have been full to bursting with them –"

Tragan bucked, straining every muscle in his body against the rack.

It didn't even creak.

No, no, no, he wanted to scream, no!

Avva's polite answering voice said, "Yes ma'am, we have a specimen who meets your requirements nicely. As you asked, he will be stressed so that only the strongest eggs survive. Now, we did agree that you would not be damaging his spinal columns, correct?"

The buzzing came back, and the voice. "I prefer the full penetration, but my situation is grave, my eggs will die if I do not lay them soon. Agreed. I will summon the lift unit and come to you."

Avva nodded her head, even though the speaker could not see her – Tragan thought. "My bay is in North Red, I eagerly anticipate your arrival."

Tragan was trying to scream behind the gag. His eyes darted around the bay, looking for cameras. Were there cameras? Horrible, horrible to be defiled and killed like this, to be – laid in, opened – but to have it be seen!

Avva came close, stroked his heaving chest as though to soothe him. "Three should do for this time. There's plenty more where they came from. Ah, company coming Tragan. This may be the last time I have you all to myself for hours."

She smiled, and held her fingers before his face: her skin parted and her cilia waved proudly in the air, like a hundred tiny arms waving hello. Waving goodbye.

"So, just for my own private curiosity, and excuse me but it's been puzzling me for ever so long, I think it's time I found out exactly how far can I stretch you out, here in this way that only a female Naglon can, before you start to – ache?"

With quick knives and eager eyes, she slit through his clothing. He closed his eyes, bit his lip under the gag. Then her fingers trailed down his body and started their gentle, relentless assault on his intimate parts, teasing at them, calling them forth…

* * *

It went on.

It went on for much longer than six days.

There were days when she did nothing put pump him full of vile fluids and then seal him up so that he could not purge himself; days he spent suspended from his thumbs or his hair or his, his other parts, while Avva's tools worked on him. Other Sast, and other alien species that had an interest in tormenting a Naglon sometimes joined her, and oh the games they played with him!

They made him crawl; they made him weep; they made him retch; they made him convulse; they made him suffer and suffer and suffer. Pain was a sea washing around him, sometimes only up to his chest, but too often closing over him and drawing him down.

But embedded in the sea of pain were flashes of pleasure. In the midst of agony, a tender caress. After days of torment, an hour of music. He didn't understand, or maybe he did.

Because the pain of the tortures were made bright and hard and different every time, in contrast to the pleasure. And as much as he fought and screamed and wailed to escape the torture at the hands of his demonic nemesis, he also desperately longed for those brief moments of mercy, from his merciful angel. His Mistress.

He knew what she was doing: she was breaking him, breaking his spirit, addicting him to her presence, making herself his own personal Hell and Heaven, and to leave one was to fall at once into the other. But it went on and on and on and on, and he could feel himself wearing away, losing himself.

* * *

Tragan came to himself on a cold steel plain, terribly cold. He was pressed against it, on hand and knees, and he could not rise because of the chains that ran from neck to elbows to ankles. It was so cold he could see frost forming around his fingers on the deck. It seemed terribly still.

He looked out of the corner of his eye and saw a pair of uniformed legs standing at ease beside him, and could have wept with happiness. He'd been terrified that he had died, and that Hell would be waiting here endlessly. But it seemed he was still alive. Still alive.

Distant laughter tinkled against his ear as he groaned, "C-cold…"

The Sast beside him said, in a conversational tone, "Here she comes."

He looked up and she was there, Avva, striding across the cold deck in soft black boots and a great black shaggy coat. There were chains dragging from her hands. She saw him move and called to him.

"Hello, Tragan! I'm coming! And just look what I brought with me!"

Along with her footsteps came growls, and barks, and Tragan cringed, flattened himself against the deck, as what she was leading on those chains bounded ahead of her, great beasts rearing and snuffling, trying to reach the helpless figure before them.

Tragan whispered, "No, please no."

Avva paid no attention to his plea. "Cold enough for you? I had them open this deck to space for two hours, to give it the proper chill. And with you nude, the cold should be quite bracing. Is it, Tragan? Answer me, Tragan."

He didn't dare not answer. He said "Y-y-y-yes," through chattering teeth.

"Good," she cooed to him. "Now, I'm sure you can see all the interesting things we have here, yes? Barriers and tunnels and holes and fences. It's an obstacle course, and you're going to run it. And in case you don't feel inspired to run," the animals reared and barked, "these sweet beasts are here to motivate you. I'm sure you recognise them, the same species as your guards, aren't they?"

Tragan felt a tiny spark of – fear? hope? – and his question came fast. "They'll kill me?"

Avva smiled pityingly at him. "Actually, they are trained to rend and hold, not kill. But if they catch you quickly, they'll be quite frustrated, because they so look forward to a nice run. You had better run very far and fast, Tragan, to get them tired out, so they don't abuse you."

Tragan pressed himself as flat as he could get against the cold deck, and whimpered, "No, I won't."

Avva tossed her hair. "Really Tragan, you should enjoy your arms and legs while you still have the use of them. And besides, you don't want to disappoint all the spectators who are watching, do you? Listen to them cheer when I wave."

She waved, and in the distance there were indeed cheers; Tragan pictured bleachers, crowds, and his heart seemed to freeze.

"And then there's this," she said. She held something in front of her, then lowered it to in front of his face.

"Look, Tragan. Surely you recognise it."

He looked at it, the barrel, the spring grip, and he started to shiver, more than the cold could account for.

"An implantation gun…for ER needles…oh no. No. You implanted me."

"Even now, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people, are tuning in to feel your most intimate feelings, sharing your body. Experienced Reality is quite the rage."

"On Arx?" he asked, and then wished desperately to call back the question. He wasn't supposed to ask questions, not to speak unless spoken to.

Avva answered, "On the planet we are in orbit around, and no more fishing for information or I'll sew your lips shut again."

He bit his lips, remembering the cold grate of wire against his teeth.

She went on, cheerily, mercilessly. "Now, your audience. Imagine how they must enjoy the touch of the cold deck on your hands and knees, the smell of these fine beasts, the touch of my hand," and she slapped him, across the shoulder on raw flesh, and he cringed.

"No!" he cried.

She asked, "You don't want to disappoint all those people, do you? You don't want to disappoint me? Tragan?"

"I can't," he cried, crying.

Avva sounded officious, which was only one step from being angry, and that was bad, very bad. "Nonsense, I haven't damaged any of your major joints or muscles yet. Your breathing passages have healed nicely from that, well, somewhat overgenerous application of corrosive gas I gave them, so you can keep your wind up. Those eggs in your abdomen haven't hatched."

She paused, and looked at where his feet left frozen red smears on the deck. "I suppose my flaying your feet yesterday will make the run a bit more painful, not to mention slippery, but you can do it. And you will."

Tragan suddenly thought of something, and it fell out of his mouth before he could recall it. "The eggs. You won't let them kill me, because of them!"

Avva ruffled his hair with one hand, with the other she choked up on the beasts' leads, to keep them from licking their prey. "No actually, we have a nice host animal waiting in the wings, ready to move the young into once they start to get – overly peckish. If you die, the eggs can be retrieved. It's an old family tradition that they be incubated in sentient flesh, but it needn't be for their full cycle."

"How long before they hatch?" slipped out of him, and he stared up at her, expecting the needle and wire to come out right then and there.

Instead she stared at him, and replied, "A long time. Or a short time. It'll be such a lovely ticklish surprise when they do, don't you think?"

Tragan stared at the deck, seeing the tiny specks of ice that were his own frozen tears. "I can't do this."

"Tragan," she said warningly.

He was breathing hard; he couldn't seem to stop it, to stop panting in fear. "I can't with…everyone watching me. I can't stand it. I can't bear to be watched like that."

He looked up, straining the collar around his neck, feeling it dig into him and pull at its chain. He looked up and pleaded, "Don't make me, please."

Avva frowned, and it cracked against him like a physical blow. "Tragan, you're going to make me cross."

He felt like his body, his soul, was falling open, was emptying out around him. "I cannot, I can not do this."

"But I want you to. Tragan."

He stopped.

He stopped, and then he crawled to her feet, he pressed his forehead to the deck at her feet, feeling the sweat of fear freeze under it, he whispered to her feet, "Mistress…"

Avva said nothing, but she sighed.

Tragan whispered, "Mistress, please, don't make me run. Don't humiliate me like that, I can take the pain, the damage, but please don't let them look at me, don't let them feel me! I didn't do this to you!"

He could feel her bending over him, it was like a thundercloud, he couldn't cringe any lower but he tried. "Go on," she said.

"It was just you and me, you were the only thing I concentrated on, I didn't share you, you were the most important thing in the world to me for those few days!"

He felt her hand on the back of his head.

"It was just you and me, Tragan."

He dared to look up, to turn his head so that he could see her face over him.

"Please, Mistress, only for you, I only…want to…for you."

She stood over him, silent. Then she said to the Sast guard, "Undo his chains and let him stand."

"Are you sure?" the guard asked, but quickly the chains were taken off his ankles, his arms, his neck. He was standing again, his feet both painful and numb against the cold deck. Avva handed the beasts' leashes to the guard, and then stood close to Tragan. He stared down into Avva's face, then closed his eyes and looked away. He couldn't bear to look at her. He wasn't – worthy to look at her.

But her warm fingers were on his face now, turning him to look at her, and she said, "Now, let me open your mouth."

He did at once.

"That's it, good, the sockets where we pulled those teeth have healed up quite nicely."

She put one arm over his back; oh the wonderful contrast between that warmth and his cold skin! She reached into her pocket and held something in front of him.

"Now, do you know that this is?"

Tragan blinked, focusing on the oval purple – "It's a Moke fruit."

"Yes, here," said Avva, "eat it."

Tragan cringed, sure it was a trick. "Eat…?"

Avva reassured him. "There's no needles in it, no razors, it's not poisoned, it's delicious. I'll take a bite," and he gazed in astonishment at the sight of her white teeth cleaving the fruit, her purple lips wet with its juices before she put it into his trembling hand, "and you can have the rest."

He shuddered under her arm, and started to devour the fruit. He couldn't remember when he had eaten last, and the fruit was sweet and wet and still warm from her pocket, it was wonderful, it was the best thing he'd ever eaten in his life. "Oh it's so good," he moaned.

Avva stroked his hair again, enjoying the play of colour in his face as he ate. "Now while you eat, and I want you to eat, I want you to keep up your strength, I'm going to explain."

He looked at her, eyes wide, and listened. And ate.

"I'm not making you run to humiliate you, or to torture you. I'm making you run so that everyone can see what a fine fleet animal you are, how dedicated to me, that you will run at my command. I want them to marvel at how deft you are at escaping the beasts, how cleverly you backtrack and trick them, and how strongly you will fight them when they finally bring you down. You are mine, Tragan, and all that you do is mine."

The Moke fruit was gone, all gone, he'd even eaten the bitter seeds. He moaned, the tears spilling freely now, and her fingers touched those tears.

"And even those tears are mine."

He swallowed, licked a last trace of juice from his lips, and husked, "Yes, Mistress."

Avva shouted, "Now run!"

Her arm lifted from his back and he ran, ran, ignoring the stinging pain, the slippery blood, the cold, ran for her, ran for the obstacle course, ran to hide and dodge and fight for her, for her, for his Mistress.

Behind him, Avva took the beasts' leads again; they growled and lunged, eager to be after their prey.

The Sast guard asked, "Aren't you going to release them?"

Avva smiled and said, "I'll let him get to the first set of obstacles first."

Curious, the guard asked, "When will you tell him that he doesn't have ER transmission needles in him after all? That his captivity is a secret?"

Avva shrugged. "Never. Why should I? He has put himself into my hand for all time now."

* * *

He was awakened with a slap, and a voice, THE voice, said "Wake up Tragan!"

He struggled up from the floor. "Yes?"

"Yes, what?"

He cursed himself, how could he have forgotten, he wasn't worthy to call her – "Yes, Mistress."

She spoke to him. "Something's come up, Tragan. Several somethings in fact. Several politically connected and irate somethings."

Somewhere behind her in the gloom, another Sast spoke. "There's no time for this."

Her voice was cold. "I choose to make the time." Then she leaned close, and held something out to him. "Tragan, what am I holding in my hand?"

He know them of course; he would know them, down to the faded spot on the black and the chipped corner on the white, for the rest of his life.

"It's…the dice."

His Mistress' face was intent on him, her terrible eyes staring into his. "There's a decision that needs to be made, Tragan, and if you want, you can take the dice and roll them. You can choose."

He cringed. "No, no, please, don't make me!" He was terrified of those dice, every time he rolled them something awful happened.

She asked him, "So you want me to choose?"

He bellied to her, touched his chin to the floor. "Yes, you Mistress, please, I am yours."

She only sighed "Ah," but that was warmth in the heart of him. He'd made the right decision; he'd pleased her.

The dice fell and he shook.

Avva looked down at the dice, and then spoke. "Tell the Naglons that he died in captivity, and the body was destroyed. Send them on their way."

She picked up the dice, and then rubbed Tragan's head affectionately. "It's really for the best, you know. They would have killed you on the spot, for the shame you brought their species. And then I wouldn't have you."

He dared to raise his head, dared to kiss her fingers. "Thank you, Mistress."

She let her fingers stay against his lips. "But still, we need to prepare, so that they won't find you. So that no one will take you from me, ever."

He whispered, "Yes?"

She stepped away from him, and said, "Computer, activate stasis field."

‘Bloo-‘

* * *

He awakened and felt no pain. No pain! But...he tried to wiggle his hands, his toes – and felt nothing.

He tried to open his eyes – and could not.

Had she broken his neck? Put a nerve block on his spinal column, to leave him trapped inside his own skull? He couldn't feel anything, not his breathing, nothing!

He listened; surely he should be able to hear his own heartbeat? But except for a strange myriad flutterings that sounded like waterlogged moths batting against a floor, there was nothing.

He tried to hold his breath, and could not.

"Because I'm not breathing!" he screamed – or tried to. The words were there in his head, but there were no lips to speak them, apparently, no tongue, and no breath.

Was he dead?

He lay there (he thought), stunned, for a long time.

Then she spoke!

"Hello, Tragan."

Her words pierced him like glass and he cringed. "Not so loud!" And his reply hurt as well.

"I am not loud, Tragan; I am not speaking, and neither are you. I've made you a little bit telepathic, so that you can hear me thinking to you. And I can hear you. When I choose."

Her words were hot oil dropped on his flesh, heavy brass bells being rung and he was the clapper. "Quiet!" he howled. "Please be quiet, it hurts!" The pain was so great that it drove him into a frenzy; he couldn't remember how he should be addressing her. He couldn't do anything but desperately try to move something, feel something - and fail.

"I know, Tragan. Everything hurts, doesn't it? That's the way I planned it."

Through the pain of his own talking, he stuttered, "I can't hear or feel my body." He wailed, "No body!"

"You have no hands or feet, Tragan. You cannot hear your heart because you have no heart. You cannot hold your breath because you are not breathing."

What had she done to him? Tentatively, he tried to guess. "Am I a brain in a jar? A computer print of my mind? A ghost?"

"None of those things, Tragan. You are on the Righteous Flea, and I am walking across the boarding area, coming to test the onboard systems and prepare to leave."

"Oh no. No. I prayed you would leave and, " finally remembering his manners, "Mistress, please, you can't – you can't take me with you. You can't, please, leave me alone, let me die!"

"Oh, but if I left you alone, you'd miss me, wouldn't you?"

And he would, he knew, he would miss her absolutely and completely, his life would have no meaning if it were not for her. And knowing that, accepting that, brought a sweet flash of happiness to him that left him limp – he thought. Tragan couldn't tell.

"Mistress," he thought submissively. "I would. Where am I? In the tank?"

"That tank is reserved for ME, Tragan, and you are not in it."

The word ME was a hot needle through his ears – or mind, as the case might be. He cringed inside himself, waiting for her to enter the ship and reveal his whereabouts to himself.

He thought he could feel a vibration: were they moving? No, it was irregular, like footsteps, and then it stopped. Avva's voice went on in his mind, like broken glass being ground into his tongue, telling him what had been done to him.

"I'm afraid we've had to liquefy your brain, Tragan, but don't worry, it works as well as it ever did. And it's been given a lovely artificial suspension medium, that will make sure it gets plenty of oxygen and nutrients, and flush away any of those nasty metabolic poisons. It's self-sealing too, just like the better ground effects tires. And although you may not be able to feel your arms and legs and torso and head, you do still have a physical body, of sorts. Can you guess yet?"

"No," he whispered, and that whisper was a drop of acid in his heart.

"Oh, I think you can. You see, I so much admired that lovely pebbled complexion of yours, that I thought I'd like to test it for resilience, durability, resistance to punctures, and so on. And I must say, it passed with flying colours – so to speak. So, while we were liquefying your brain, we were also peeling you flat, taking out all those bones and organs and such you won't be needing, encouraging your skin to grow in certain directions, thickening it here and there, making the corners neat-"

The vibration again, and then a sensation, a definite sensation, the feeling of a boot stepping on his skin. And it was the worst agony yet, crushing him flat, bruising him, grinding into him.

"You see, Tragan, you are my new carpet."

And as Avva commenced her checklist, walking from room to room, crossing the main area again and again to inventory supplies and double check safety readings, Tragan screamed and screamed and screamed.

She spoke in his mind, and he was instantly silent.

"All your senses are now routed through me, except for touch: and that touch is pain. If you want to see, to hear, to feel anything else except pain, it will only be through me. I can turn that pain into ecstasy as I will it, Tragan, but only as I will it."

Tragan prayed, not for death, but for her grace, her happiness, that he might be allowed to see, to hear, to feel again.

She went on, "Now don't distract me, here comes the Customs inspector, and look at those lovely hobnailed boots! I think he's going to say something, would you like to hear?"

More vibrations, and then a voice, echoing from Avva's mind to his: "Exterior looks fine, standard calibrations met – but dear! You've got to get rid of that carpet, it smothers the whole room! It's so – asymmetrical!"

The boots met his surface, and he screamed again.

* * *

It was later, much later. Days? Years? Deep in space and quiet.

He whispered, "Mistress?" He had learned that She could block out his 'voice' with no effort, but sometimes, when all was still, She would deign to talk to him.

"Yes, Tragan?" She was seated at the table; Her bare foot brushed him, just his finest hairs, and he gurgled with fright.

"Mistress…I remember the roll of the dice…and you smiled and laughed…but…I never looked down. I never saw…who had the lower number."

Without a word, She lifted Her feet from him.

"Mistress?"

She was silent. And She did not touch him.

"Mistress?"

Silence. Darkness. No feeling, no sensation, no sound, no touch…

"Mistress, please…please don't leave me here in the dark…please talk to me, please touch me, please!"

O ecstasy, Her voice in his mind, very quiet and low, "Tell me Tragan, if I offered you your freedom now, would you take it?"

"No, please! Don't leave me…"

"Ahhhh," and Her foot on his skin, and the pain and the pleasure were one, ecstatic agony.

"Ahhhh," She sighed with him.

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: There's definitely a few stiff bits in Act III, based on adapting an audio work. Can't quite see how to fix them, though.


End file.
